


Tales from Q-branch: A 00Q Ficlet Collection

by Only_1_Truth



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Older Characters, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Q is awkward but caring, Safeword Use, Shapeshifting, bdsm undertones, injured Bond, not all tags apply to each story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-16 21:54:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 64,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13062909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Only_1_Truth/pseuds/Only_1_Truth
Summary: A collection of ficlets, ranging from the fluffiest of fluffs, to smut, to hurt/comfort - 00Q and JAQ.  Each chapter is its own story, and individual tags on in the chapters notes.





	1. In which James breaks his arm

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was inspired by the wonderful art piece by [NavyDream](). Someone shared it on a Facebook page that I frequent, but I recommend that everyone go and see this piece - you can find it [here](http://navydream.tumblr.com/post/128149731306/cant-wait-for-spectre). Q's face, in particular, is utterly precious.
> 
> Brief summary:  
> James comes back from a mission with a broken arm, and Q can't deal with it. So, of course, he tries to help.
> 
> Tags: hurt/comfort, injured!James, caring!Q, James needs some TLC, Q might need it more, Q needs hugs, he has three cats instead, fluff, pre-00Q-relationship

For all that James was an incredibly reckless agent, it had never really occurred to Q that 007, by and large, avoided serious injury. He sometimes got declared dead, true, but it was all or nothing with James: he was either 'dead' for awhile, or he came back with lots of minor scrapes and bruises. Therefore, it was something of a shock when James came back from Portugal with his arm in a sling. For a split second, Q actually thought that the cast was some new strange weapon James was bringing back to him, until he realized that James Bond, MI6's most resiliently annoying (and annoying resilient, if you asked the Queen's enemies) agent had broken his arm.

It was strange, watching the man come into Q-branch and converse like any other day, but with one limb largely immobilized. James was teasing R (a new hobby), and hadn't turned to find Q yet, so that gave the young Quartermaster a moment to just watch the man, disturbed and mesmerized by the appearance of an injured agent. It was like going to a park and seeing a statue recently effaced, or learning that gods stumbled. Q didn't like it, especially as he began to notice the way Bond's jaw and eyes tightened from time to time even though his mouth smiled, and how he seemed to shift his body so that his strongest side faced people, his injury subtly protected by the wall of his body.

"Bond!" Q called, suddenly unable to just stare anymore. It was too unsettling, and he couldn't quite articulate why. Still smirking at whatever R had just said to him, James turned, eyebrows raising expectantly. He came over to Q as if nothing were amiss, and Q did his best not to stare at the blue sling or the bone-white cast. "Your kit? Dare I ask if you brought anything back with you?"

"I brought back my charming personality."

"Nice try."

007 seemed to think on it, staring upwards at the ceiling, and then feigning a delighted look of realization. He reached for his holster, a movement that looked uncomfortable as it forced him to raise his damaged arm. Q winced even if James didn't really. 007's Walther was pulled forth.

Q looked at it. Blinked. Frowned. "That has bite-marks on it."

"There were sharks!" James was quick to defend as Q took the chewed weapon from him. When Q met the man's gaze, those blue eyes were alight with amusement, and suddenly Q was tempted to break Bond's other arm.

~^~

"How come you don't want to stay at my place?" Q overheard Moneypenny asking James in the break room sometime later. Apparently Bond's neighbor had accidentally lit a couch on fire, and that meant everyone was temporarily finding other living accommodations for the good of their lungs, until all of the smoke was cleared out. There had been no permanent damage to 007's place, but it still wasn't entirely livable at the moment.

The agent replied with a huff, "Because I'll never get any sleep."

"I thought you liked my parties?"

"I do," Bond replied, then grumbled more grudgingly, "Except when I've got a bum arm and all of these damn painkillers just make me want to sleep."

Maybe it was the frustration in 007's voice, which sounded like it went deeper than just that one sentence; maybe it was because Q was entirely too soft-hearted for his own good, as evidenced by the three stray cats he'd let into his house and never tried to re-home; maybe it was because Q, being an insomniac, understood that sleep was precious and not compatible with Moneypenny's love of a good time. Regardless of the reasons, Q ended up pushing the rest of the way into the break room and blurting, "You can stay at mine!"

Eve and James both turned to stare at him. Blushing to his ears, Q shuffled his feet a bit and helpfully added, "I can promise: no parties."

~^~

"Stop it, Nod, we don't even know if James likes cats!" Q whispered as he hurriedly tried to get into the house ahead of his new, temporary housemate, knowing that Winken, Blinken, and Nod were clingy little sods and sometimes overly friendly. It was probably a reaction to having lived on their own for so long.

In all honesty, Q could relate.

Perhaps James overheard Q, because when Q looked up from where he'd crouched down to distract his biggest cat, the agent was smiling. Q felt his ears heat. "Uh... the bedroom is down the hall and to the right. I cleaned up a bit, but I apologize for the cat hair." Q didn't mention that his flat was too small for a proper guest bedroom, so that was actually _his_  bedroom, but he planned to spend most of his time awake and working anyway. The couch was perfectly fine for that. "Make yourself at home."

It was only then that Q recalled the habit of cats getting underfoot, and suddenly he was terrified that this plan would go horribly awry. Could Quartermasters get fired if their cats caused the further damage of valuable agents? If Winken tripped James and caused the man to break his other arm, did cats go to jail? The fears were totally illogical, but then again, so was Q's fear of planes, and that didn't really slow his brain down any.

It was a pleasant surprise, therefore, when it turned out that 00-agents were immune to cats. This fact slowly revealed itself throughout the evening (Q had left work early to get James settled), as James walked around the flat and did indeed make himself at home in a gentlemanly fashion. Q wondered if this was just injured-James, or if totally-healthy-James was capable of being such quiet, pleasant company. Regardless, something about the way the agent walked seemed to allow him to avoid furry roadblocks, and no tripping occurred.

  
Q, on the other hand, nearly stumbled headlong into the table as Blinken jetted out past his legs while Q was ordering take-out. James snorted and smirked but otherwise kept his mirth to a polite level, while Q tried to regain himself and recall what kind of Chinese food they wanted.

Q watched as, towards the end of their eating dinner, James' expression grew tenser and his posture subtly tighter. It wasn't obvious, but since they were watching hockey (a sport that Q didn't understand in any way, shape, or form), he had nothing else really to distract him. "You should take something," the quiet words more or less fell out of Q's mouth. While Q digested the fact that he was apparently giving unsolicited advice to a 00-agent who'd survived multiple assassination attempts, James stared at him at first in surprise... and then in a tired sort of acceptance. It made the man look older, the lines around his eyes deeper, and not in a good way. Not saying anything, just nodding, James got up and fetched the pain meds from his (Q's) room, grabbing a glass of water before downing them. Nothing more was said of it, and for awhile after 007 came and sat down again, things were awkward and tense.

Because Q had never really done well with uncomfortable silences, he panicked a bit. He couldn't start up a conversation because the only two topics readily available were hockey and James's condition - neither of which Q felt qualified to talk about. So, instead, in a desperate bid to break the stiffness in the air, Q... grabbed Nod and plopped the ball of grey fluff on 007's lap. The agent startled, lifting his good arm and looking down almost comically at the cat while Q's arms sheepishly retreated, the task completed.

Q cleared this throat awkwardly.

Nod blinked and looked around himself, judging the quality of this new lap.

James didn't move for a moment, and Q could still see in him the tension of a man who didn't like to be seen as weak.

"Cats... are therapeutic," Q said finally, haltingly. He wet his lips and tried to continue as pale blue eyes flicked towards him, full of questions, "They're supposed to help with things like high blood pressure, and besides that, they're warm. I figured..." Now Q's words petered off, betraying the fact that he was absolutely atrocious at any kinds of conversation that didn't revolve around work. This was why Q was so unfailingly professional to everyone he met: because if things became more friendly and mundane, he made an idiot of himself, and it was like being the odd one out at Uni all over again.

James was watching him, though, with an expression that said he didn't think Q was an oddball or an idiot, and after waiting a moment to be sure that Q wasn't going to finish his sentence, the agent gave a little nod and finished for him, "You figured that I'd appreciate it?"

  
Unsure if this was a trap of some sort, Q sat back on the couch to look rigidly forward, hoping that it looked like he was watching the game. Which had gone to commercials. "Yes," he squeaked, mortified with himself. All of this had been a terrible idea.

But then Bond slowly relaxed, lowering his arm again. Dressed in a pullover and relaxed slacks, James had already looked relatively at ease, but now he let his good arm loop around Nod. The gesture looked slow but natural, and Nod immediately started up a stuttering but happy purr that always reminded Q of an old grandmother distractedly humming a song she'd forgotten half the words to. "Thanks, Q," James murmured gently, as he scratched his fingers gently against Nod's sleek shoulder.

The commercials ended and the hockey game came back on, and James's attention switched easily to it. Q was left staring at his agent and his cat, flabbergasted that things had all worked out. Nod, the smug sod, cuddled closer with a contented expression that said he'd noticed that New Person had a higher body temp than Owner Person. As if knowing that his new perch came with special circumstances, however, the cat never once bumped James's bad arm.

Not even when Winken and Blinken wondered up, and the battle for lap space began.

~^~

James's meds did indeed make him sleepy, and he groggily apologized for not being able to stay up and watch the rest of the game with Q. Only too happy to no longer have to watch people chase each other around the ice (although the periodic fights were interesting), Q waved off the apology and wished James a good night. As the man got up and shuffled away, his usual light step replaced by something heavier and more painful, Q watched him go with a sore heart. He wanted to do something, just like he'd wanted to do something back at Q-branch, back at the break room, here on his couch an hour ago.

Nod meowed forlornly from the space 007 had vacated. The cushion was no doubt losing the man's warmth. It gave Q an idea.

Filled now with determination, Q smiled and quickly scooped up one cat - then two, then three as he juggled the furrballs into a passable hold - and padded up to the bedroom. The door was ajar, but it was already quiet and dark inside. The slightest rustle from the bed let Q know that 007 was already settled in, probably trying to get his arm comfortable. Looking down at the admirably tolerant cats hanging in his arms, Q nuzzled Winken's head and whispered to all of them, "He's warmer than me," before putting them on the floor and shooing them into the bedroom.

Winken, Blinken, and Nod were not young cats. They still ran around like plushy demons from time to time, but mostly, they'd reached the stage of their lives where all they really wanted was a warm place to sleep all the time. Usually that meant the pile of pillows in front of the hot air vents, or Q. Now, that meant the injured 00-agent in Q's bedroom. Finally feeling like he'd done some real good, Q smiled from the anonymity of the hallway as he heard a quiet noise of surprise, followed by James' low voice and a few meows. Since the voice sounded pleased and soon silence fell again, Q knew his work was done.

Feeling suddenly tired himself, Q went to hunt up spare blankets for the couch.  

~^~

Agents never slept through the entire night unless something was very wrong or very right - and perhaps it was a little bit of both in Q's flat, as pain and medication dragged James down into a heavy sleep, but fuzzy purring bodies helped him stay there. Even without Q's incredibly friendly cats, there was a feeling of safety here, because for all of his unexpected and endearing awkwardness, Q was a friend who'd always had the best interests of any agent at heart.

Therefore, when Bond woke up after an unprecedented eight hours of sleep, he felt calm.

  
When he got up to use the loo and also take another dose of painkillers (although the pain still wasn't as bad as he’d remembered), James wondered where Q was - and answered his own question almost as quickly as he walked through the living room to find a pass-out boffin on the couch. Glasses off but the rest of him still dressed for work, as if he'd never quite intended to fall asleep, Q looked like just about the coziest, homiest mess 007 had ever seen.

The cats had followed James out of the bedroom.

One-handed but with great care, James picked the cats up one by one and re-settled them on their sleeping owner. James watched with a soft smile as Q frowned a little in his sleep and then settled down again, one cat walking delicately over Q's arm to fit itself into the space between Q's neck and shoulder.

"Thanks, Q," James said again, this time with his words meaning a lot more than before.  
~^~

 


	2. After Hours with Alec, Q, and James

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q, James, and Alec are all finally off work at the same time. The night has already started... but it's about to heat up even more...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific tags for this ficlet: JAQ, explicit sexual content, fingering, lots of nudity, blowjobs, slightly BDSM undertones (use of safewords), Q is well-loved, everyone ends up happy, PWP

Q clung to James’ shoulders, releasing a silent little gasp against one prominent ear as one of the agent’s hands gripped his arse - and the other traced a chilly line of lubricant down his back, sliding down to tease at his hole.  They were still standing, and Q quivered at the unexpected effort of remaining balanced when his body just wanted to _move_.  His mind tried to balk at the ridiculousness of the two of them standing naked in the hallway of their home - when there were perfectly good beds in the house, and Alec was probably already waiting for them in one - but all of that faded as James’ finger pressed in, breaching him.  Suddenly, it was more important to clench around that feeling of pleasure than it was to find a more practical venue, especially as James’ free hand slid up his back to hold him closer.  Powerful fingers kneaded the muscles between Q’s shoulder-blades, and James huffed into Q’s ear as their cocks slid together.  Despite his best intentions to stay focused, Q started to forget about everything as they ground together.  James’ impeccable balance kept them upright and his slicked fingers likewise worked Q open, wringing little gasps from Q and throaty, appreciative hums from the agent.  A few times, Q considered opening his mouth to say something - maybe to ask where Alec was, maybe to suggest they go somewhere at least horizontal, maybe just to ask where this was going in general - but every time, James would push into him, or rut his hips forward, or catch the lobe of Q’s ear between his teeth.  They weren’t even _kissing_ ; instead, James was just holding him and winding him up like this was all he’d wanted to do all day.  

Just when Q started moaning because the friction just wasn’t quite enough, he heard the slightest scuff of a bare foot behind him, and realized that he’d forgotten that he had two spies in the house, not one.  

“Here, let me take him off your hands, Jamesy,” Alec’s voice came from right behind him, its playfulness holding a husky edge that told Q, instantly, that 006 had been watching all along.  Despite the fact that Q and James and Alec had slept together plenty already, it sent a bolt of embarrassed pleasure through the boffin to realize that he’d just been put on display.  The unexpected exhibitionism thrilled him more than he’d expected, and his shyness faded quickly as he felt Alec’s big, warm hands land on his ribs, seeming to get the feel of them for a moment before caressing forward, ultimately sliding in between James and Q to gently pull Q back.  James let Q go with one last, hard suck to Q’s neck, making Q curse involuntarily.

But then he was being held with his back to Alec’s front, realizing that 006 had found time to strip, too - and to find his own lube, as his cock nudged slickly between Q’s cheeks.  They hadn’t turned any lights on, so the house was lit only with what moonlight slipped through the curtains, making Bond a practice in chiaroscuro in front of Q - but the man seemed content to stand back and watch silently now, chest heaving slightly and cock at attention to reveal how turned on he was.  It was all eerily, beautifully silent, although it was broken by twin breaths as Alec clenched his right arm around Q’s waist to pull him closer.  His other hand dragged up Q’s chest until it could cup around the front of his throat, and Q finally got a mouth-to-mouth kiss as he turned his head.  As he started to reach up, however, intent on at least messing up Alec’s hair a little bit, 006 shifted his grip and pinned Q’s arms beneath both of his.  

James stepped forward.  One quick, smooth pace was all it took to bring him within touching distance again.  As Q broke the kiss with Alec and looked at him questioningly, the meagre moonlight glinted off intense, watchful eyes and a crooked smile that promised trouble.  The ‘trouble’ started when James leaned in for a kiss - teasing - but then detoured at the last moment to buff his cheek against Q’s jaw like a bloody big cat.  When Q huffed in annoyance, James made up for it by laying his hands on Q’s waist (just beneath Alec’s still-restraining arm) and pressing a kiss to the hollow beneath Q’s ear.  The kisses grew fiercer and more bruising as they worked their way down Q’s neck, coaxing little mewls from Q’s throat as he started to try and move, but found out that he couldn’t.  

When Alec leaned in by Q’s ear and murmured, “Color?” however, Q immediately panted back, “Green,” and James’ kisses turned into bites.  Alec began to move at his back, rocking slowly, the girth of his cock finding friction between Q’s cheeks and beginning to sound lewd.  

James was good with his mouth.  He had a lot of skills that Q had seen in a lot of situations (both on mission and in bed - there was a surprising amount of crossover), but somewhere along the line, James had learned to take kissing to another level, and Q found himself shuddering just waiting for it.  With Alec’s brawny arms encircling his arms and waist, that left a lot of skin totally open to James’ attention, and by the glint in 007’s eyes - visible as he glanced up to meet Q’s gaze in the dimness - he _knew_ it.  

What Q should have known from the start was that 00-agents always had a plan.  It very rarely looked like it, but they always did.  

James was applying his mouth in ways that were definitely going to force Q to wear a turtleneck for the rest of the week, even before Alec freed up one arm to capture Q’s chin, forcing their Quartermaster’s head further back.  The reasoning was quickly apparent, as James leaning in to suckle a string of bruises right down the front of Q’s throat, starting at the soft underside of his jaw.  It was always thrilling to be reminded just how strong these men were, and Q could feel it in Trevelyan’s hand, in how effortlessly he manipulated Q to give Bond the best access.  This was the kind of strength that could break a person, and it was always amazing to remember that they wouldn’t do that with him… or, at least, they wouldn’t break their Quartermaster in a _bad_ way.  Q shivered and smiled as he thought of that - and then gasped, as Alec began to rut his hips with more purpose, the head of his cock nudging closer and closer to Q’s hole… which James had lubed and stretched already, preparing Q for someone else’s use.  Q’s released his breath in a high-pitched, eager keen as he realized how the agents had both intended this from the start.

James’ hands, feather-light but roughened with gun-calluses and scars, skimmed down Q’s arms, joining Alec in keeping the boffin still.  With Bond’s thumbs idly rubbing at the insides of Q’s elbows, the blue-eyed agent dragged his tongue down to lap the sweat out of the hollow of Q’s throat.  When Q made a little choking noise that might have been a swear, Alec chuckled and James angled his head to nip at the taut skin over one collarbone.  

At the same time, Alec let go of Q’s chin - but only to line up his cock.  Q felt the brush of Alec’s hand moving between them, and that was the only warning he got before he felt the head of Alec’s cock pushing in where James’ fingers had been previously.  Awash in sensation, Q’s eyes snapped shut, and this time he rocked his head back freely.  

“Color?” Alec asked again, voice a bit more strained, but his body held rigorously under control - it had to be torture, holding still with just the tip in.  James hadn’t spoken yet, but he’d stilled as well, just his breath rushing regularly in and out against the skin of Q’s chest.  

“G-Green,” Q got out, then wet his lips and said more sharply as he wriggled his hips, “Green, dammit!”

James snorted against Q’s sternum and then moved to take one peaked nipple between his teeth, even as Alec’s body rolled and he seated himself fully in Q’s arse with one smooth thrust.  Q couldn’t keep himself from crying out in wordless elation, body arching as his nerves sang.  

Alec didn’t start moving immediately, just buried his head in the juncture between Q’s neck and shoulder and groaned from somewhere deep in his soul.  He went back to holding Q stationary with both hands again, but now it felt as much like he was grounding himself as restraining his partner.  Both arms around Q’s lower stomach kept them flush together, Alec’s hands turning so that his fingers flexed and dug into Q’s hipbone and side.  By this point, Q’s cock was erect and leaking, and he’d never wanted so badly to just grab James’ hair and push his mouth down where it was needed - but he _couldn’t_ , because that was the game they were playing tonight.  

Even as Q made a noise of wordless frustration and finally began to writhe, James doubled down and made even more of a menace of himself.  Moving a hand to softly rake his fingernails down Q’s ribs - just hard enough not to be ticklish - James took the nipple he’d been worrying and pressed the flat of his tongue against it, a slow wet drag preceding a hard suck that brought all the blood to the surface and seemed to bring Q’s every nerve along with it.  “ _Fuck_!” Q broke the quiet again, feeling tongue and teeth, and he glanced down to see mercilessly playful blue eyes looking up at him.  

While James’ other hand soothed up Q’s scratched side, heading towards Q’s other nipple, Alec hummed against the crook of Q’s neck - a preparatory sort of noise, a pleasant warning.  A beat later and he rocked his hips just slightly, and the drag of his cock reminded Q of how he was being pinned in place both within and without.  His thighs shook and he clenched his hands, but at the same time felt that flush of endorphins as his body realized that it was stable, safe.  He’d never felt so anchored, Alec’s iron strength holding Q on his cock even as he slowly built up a rhythm.  

James was the free one, and he was using that freedom to take advantage of his Quartermaster.  He released one thoroughly reddened nipple, traveling across Q’s chest with small but hungry bites, leaving Q to feel the coldness of air on wet skin.  Even though he knew the agent’s new destination, Q still arched and gasped as James caught the other nipple in his teeth, taking a lot of flesh this time and exerting slow but steadily increasing pressure until the pain became a bright, intense bloom of sensation in Q’s mind.  Even as Q’s head fell back against Alec’s shoulder (and his arse clenched around Alec’s cock, instigating a loud, throaty swear of pleasure), James’ hand trailed down until it was flat against Q’s stomach, right above Alec’s locking arm.  Therefore, he felt it when Q’s muscles tightened and signaled a tip from pleasure into sincere pain.  James let go.  This was what made him so good with his mouth: he read his partners, and adjusted accordingly.  The returning rush of blood - and cool air, too, in the absence of 007’s hot mouth - created a whole new wave of pleasure, and Q’s mouth gaped in a little gasp.  Q thought he felt a 007-shaped smile against his skin.

Although the tensing of Q’s body had momentarily slowed Alec down, he was recovering quickly, his hips snapping forward with more and more intent.  Although Q still felt safe and stable, he nonetheless widened his stance a bit, wriggling to find that perfect angle.  He whined to find his movements just as restricted as before - even though he knew that the wait would make the climax sweeter.  One of James’ hands had lowered to stroke at one of Q’s thighs, promising more, but before Q could demand that Bond quit teasing, he felt the rough brush of stubble across his abused nipple, the sensation enough to make him yelp.  

“You’re a sadist,” Q rasped out, curling his head to the side in a ludicrous attempt to bury his blush against the side of Alec’s neck - it was too dark to see him flushing anyway.

In reply, all James did was drop fully to his knees, teasing grin in place as he corrected in a lion’s low purr, “I’m _your_ sadist.”  And then leaned forward just enough so that he could touch the tip of his tongue to the tip of Q’s weeping cock.  Alec tightened his grip and moaned again as Q’s body twisted in response, trying ineffectually to get closer.  James, the bastard, leaned back and away instead.  While Q’s first instinct was to swear a blue streak at James for drawing this out, all he ended up doing was leaning back into Alec and gazing down through lowered lids at the third member of their party, knowing with utmost certainty that he didn’t want anything else besides what James wanted to give him.  

There was just something about seeing an agent like James on his knees… and there was something else entirely about being _held still_ , and at the mercy of said agent on his knees.  The two power dynamics coexisted in this moment despite holding wildly different undertones, and Q felt gooseflesh break out upon his skin even as James’ eyes - turned glass-pale as a slant of moonlight caught them - glanced up at him, momentarily unreadable until a crooked smile crooked up one corner of the man’s mouth.  The unfathomable gaze of a predator became the cheeky smirk of an agent who knows his worth.  Resting on his heels, he stroked a hand from Q’s shins up to his hip, where he cupped the bone but stretched out a thumb until he could stroke a blunt nail through the dark thatch of hair at Q’s groin.  Alec thrust a bit harder in that moment, making Q gasp and his hand flex involuntarily, touching James’ knuckles in an involuntary brush - the first contact that Q had been allowed to initiate since Alec had taken hold of him.  It startled the Quartermaster enough that he actually twisted his head down to look, blinking fast.  When he looked to James to see what his response would be, the agent looked thoughtful.

Which was never a good sign.  

“Alec.”

“Hmm?” the green-eyed agent paused in his movements, although it was clear that his obedience took effort.  He was panting slightly and Q could feel the sweat between his own back and Alec’s torso.  006 hooked a chin over Q’s shoulder, and in profile, Q could see one eye, its pupil dilated in a way that probably had very little do with the poor lighting.  “What are you thinking?” he asked James.  The only sign that Q was there - and not a toy to be played with - was the way Alec leaned his head in, buffing their cheeks together briefly and comfortingly.  They’d relegated Q to play a role without agency in tonight’s scene, but he’d _never_ lack value to them.  

While James’ erection was unabashedly visible, his expression was clear; he was the playmaker tonight, and he always seemed to take his jobs in bed more seriously than his jobs in the field.  Likewise, he (and Alec) treated Q far more carefully than any piece of field-equipment.  After another pause in which Q tried to rein in his own body’s demands (demands that Alec _move_ , that somebody touch him, that James just bloody fucking swallow him down already), James ordered calmly, “Let go of his arms.  Q-”  The Quartermaster turned to 007 immediately, wary but interested.  In response, James’ smile turned just the tiniest bit pleased… and wicked.  “Put your hands behind Alec’s head.  Let go, and I stop.”

“And you stop wha-?  Oh god,” Q’s question stuttered into a gasping curse as James went from slow and steady to fast and greedy, his mouth sliding over the head of Q’s cock and immediately tonguing the slit.  He didn’t need to worry about bracing a hand on Q’s hips to keep him from bucking - Alec already had that covered - so instead he wrapped one fist around the base of Q’s cock and slid the other between the boffin’s legs, no longer taunting but instead intently taking Q apart.  

“Hands, Q,” Alec reminded helpfully as Q’s thoughts scattered and Alec let up enough that he could slip his arms free.  For a second, the Quartermaster’s mind drew a blank, unable to comprehend what Alec was saying - then belatedly remembering that James’ sudden charity came with strings attached.  Fortunately, Alec was in a helpful mood, one of his hands even rising to guide Q’s arms up and back while he kept the boffin’s body anchored and close.  Q groaned as he finally felt Alec’s head beneath his hands, the change in posture changing the angle of the cock sliding in and out of his arse.  Alec groaned, too, when Q responded by tightening his grip on wavy golden strands, holding Alec close just as the agent was doing to him in return.  While Q got a kiss on his cheek as a reward - and Alec began to thrust into him more rhythmically again - James also rewarded Q by taking more of him in.  

Q didn’t have to do a thing; Alec’s thrusts translated into Q’s hips, and James rode it out with the patient skill of a man that had entirely too much training at seducing people with sex, oral or otherwise.  As he realized that not only choice but effort had been taken out of his hands, Q found himself relaxing, the pleasure translating into something vaster and deeper as he felt himself rising towards his climax.  

He tugged at Alex’s hair as 006 gripped his hips now with both hands, tightly enough that Q would probably have bruises to match the marks of James’ love-bites; Alec started peppering kisses over the side of Q’s neck and jaw, gentler than James’ but no less ardent; James gripped one of Q’s ankles and pulled upwards, and Q trusted both agents to keep him balanced even as James hooked Q’s left leg over his shoulder.  That final change in angles was the last straw for both Q and Alec, who swore in harmony even as James swallowed Q down deeper - and chuckled.  Q felt the smug vibrato of it, and when he said James’ name, he wasn’t sure whether he was cursing the man or praying to him a little.  

“Come on, love,” Alec coaxed, giving up his grip on Q’s hips to instead bring a hand up to Q’s throat again, cupping it with all the dangerous strength and unrelenting care of a lioness’s mouth upon her cub.  Q keened as each of Alec’s strokes made him see sparks, thanking Bond for the change in position, and kneaded the back of Alec’s skull with covetous hands.  He tried to find a verbal reply, to talk about how he was hovering on the edge and just needed someone to tip him over it, but all that came out of his mouth was a needy whine.  “Just let go, Q, that’s it,” Alec soothed, his grip on Q’s neck shifting so that he could angle Q’s head around and pepper his mouth with soft kisses.  

What finally pushed Q over the edge, though, was feeling Alec’s other hand move - and instinctively glancing down to follow its path.  Alec’s fingers traced almost lightly down towards Q’s groin, and reached to where James was still driving Q insane.  The average person would never have called Alec Trevelyan ‘tender,’ but Q had learned differently in his time with him.  Still, sometimes he forgot.  Now, he remembered, a bolt of emotion slipping into his chest as he watched Alec take a moment to stroke the tips of his first two fingers along James’ jaw.  

Q choked out a cry - his entire back arching away from Alec’s chest and his heel digging into James’ shoulder - as he came.  He felt it as his own body dragged a climax out of Alec, too, and felt a flash of pride as he translated the words being snarled lovingly into the side of his neck - Russian words, deep and throaty, calling Q all sorts of nice and lewd things.  One word Q didn’t quite catch, his own high whiting out his thoughts, but he thought Alec called him a god.  

~^~

Things went a bit fuzzy around the edges, but in the best way.  As Quartermaster, it was vital that Q’s mind be razor-sharp at all times, and it had taken two 00-agents to convince him that letting go could be fun - and would be _okay_.  With two assassin-spies to ensure that nothing bad happened in their immediate world, Q allowed his thoughts to drift, his mind and body one big, happy haze.  Despite his lack of clothes, he felt warm, and he ceased to pull at Trevelyan’s hair.  Instead, he carded his fingers through it, reveling in that buzzing hypersensitivity that had spread to fill his entire body.  He nuzzled against the agent’s ear, and received a noise in response that was almost too low to be a purr, but was definitely still a purr.  

No longer touching either of them, James had settled back to sit on his heels, looking content even as he licked a stray drop of cum off the side of his mouth.  Despite the fact that he was still hard, he didn’t look sexually frustrated, but instead rather pleased.  Then again, as an agent, perhaps this was his instinct, and Alec’s, too: if they were all swooning in postcoital bliss, who would watch the others’ backs?  

Moved by this implied loyalty, Q pulled himself out of his high enough to look down at James and frown, troubled.  “Hey,” he said, and he was sure he’d meant to say more, but nothing seemed adequate, and his words were still off somewhere, floating.  Instead of asking after James’ happiness, the boffin disentangled one hand from Alec’s hair and reached down towards the other agent.  Some dazed part of his brain imagined himself reaching all the way down to James’ cock somehow - because a handjob was the least that James deserved - but instead he just got a stubbled chin and jaw nudging against his palm.  Instead of making demands, James just waited.  

He knew he’d get what he wanted.

“Let me,” Q requested, even though his words still weren’t working, “Let me.”

“You’re barely even standing, Q,” James pointed out with a small chuckle, but he took the pad of Q’s thumb in his teeth, nipping gently.  His hunger was well-hidden but it was there, in the tension of his jaws, intensity of his eyes, the subtle flexing of his muscles even as he knelt in seeming idleness.  

“I don’t need to stand.”

They compromised.  Alec wasn’t quite as eager to hold Q up as he had been, now that both their bodies were loose and content.  Still quivering with pleasant aftershocks, everyone relocated to the bedroom at long last, Q and Alec both gasping as they came apart, Alec’s softened cock sliding free.  Q didn’t even feel like complaining about the slick feel of lube and cum sliding down his thighs as he walked.  He was vaguely aware of at least one arm around his shoulders at all times, and of the hardwood floor turning to plush carpet, slants of moonlight eventually being replaced by the honey-warm glow of the bedside lamp.  They were in Q’s room, which made Q smile, because it had the biggest bed.  

James sat on the edge of it, still nude and erect and somehow regal as he said nothing, did nothing.  A true king didn’t even need to speak to be obeyed, and Q pulled away from Alec’s arm to shuffle forward.  He was still deep in his headspace and he knew it, and he also knew that James would like him this way - because sometimes agents just liked to use people, and sometimes Q just liked to be used.  Now it was the Quartermaster’s turn to kneel, and he sank with a sort of boneless grace down between James’ knees, his own hands limp upon his lap.  For a moment, that was the scene: Alec once again watching, somewhere behind; James lit a soft gold like a statue dedicated to victory or to war; Q on his knees, as relaxed as a cat in the sun and more than willing to give back some of the pleasure he’d been given.  

“Green,” he said softly, mouth shaping a soft smile.  James’ gaze sharpened in response - but also warmed.  

“Come here,” Bond crooned, his hands reaching forward to take Q’s head between them, guiding.  Q was grateful; he wanted James to feel good, but he also wanted to fall asleep.  If James was still willing to do most of the work, then Q could almost do both.  Eyes drifting closed, Q opened his mouth and slackened his jaw, soon feeling the head of Bond’s cock against his lips, and then laying heavy on his tongue.  

Q trusted James to be careful, and he was.  When the Quartermaster had first started sleeping with MI6’s top two agents, he’d never thought that he’d ever reach the point where he trusted them as much as he did now - never thought that he’d give them permission to fuck him awake, Alec liking the docile softness of Q’s body and James liking the element of control and surprise - never thought that he’d actually like it when they showed him how impossible it was to escape them, making it clear that they could do whatever they wanted with their slimmer partner, but would instead always respect his wants and needs.  It was that history that allowed Q to just give himself over to 007’s hands now, as the agent fucked into his mouth and buried calloused fingers in Q’s hair.  

Q wished he were more alert, so that he could watched James come undone a bit, but instead he just sort of drifted in the calmness that came with knowing he was in good hands.  He moved as James directed him, breathed when James let him, and when the agent finally came with an almost inaudible gasp of Q’s name - his real name - the boffin swallowed every last drop.  

~^~

Being almost silent during sex was definitely a novelty, and Q blearily considered that as Alec came back to bed - he’d taken the responsibility of cleaning them all up.  They’d never explicitly agreed upon it, but apparently somewhere along the path of their threeway relationship, it had been decided that Q never had to worry about anything after a scene.  There were benefits to being at the receiving end of everything, apparently.  Q hummed and burrowed deeper into the pillows (glasses on the nightstand now) as he thought of this, something warm and incandescently happy expanding in his chest.  It only spread more quickly as Alec reached forward without prompting or hesitation to pull Q in close.  James, who’d already had an arm around the Quartermaster, grunted and opened his eyes to displeased blue slits.  It took a bit of repositioning until everyone was happy with the positions - meaning both agents were satisfied with how much they were touching their Quartermaster, and Q felt precious as hell in between them.  

“Good, Q?” James asked, something about his serious tone indicating that he didn’t just mean their present arrangement - he meant that past hour.  James was mostly on his back with Q sprawled back against him.  Alec was in front of them, close enough that his arm was draped over both Q’s waist and James’, heavy and possessive.  By morning he'd be lying on them.

Because he knew that a thoughtful answer was better than a knee-jerk response, Q chewed the question over, his sleepy brain taking a bit longer to catalogue everything: his body, his mind, his mood.  He realized that he was still in his headspace somehow, but he didn’t mind, because he knew he was safe here.  “Really good,” he murmured back, snuggling into his spot and loving the _good_ ache that he felt in a half dozen places.  James rolled a bit to spoon Q more securely, and Q felt a wave of contentment at being sandwiched in place.  Alec, possibly asleep already, breathed out a bit more deeply in a gust that rustled Q’s bangs.  

Outside, it started snowing - enough that it would pack the streets tomorrow, and give them all a good excuse to have a bit of a lie-in come morning.  The cold would make it easy for Q to wear a turtleneck pullover until the weekend, at which point he sincerely hoped to do this all over again, missions permitting.  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured that since I was behind in posting 'Sciamachy,' I should at least reward people by showing them what I was working on instead ;) Sometimes I like to write adventure, sometimes suspense, sometimes fluff... sometimes I just need me some smut.
> 
> If you want to read more about Bond as a God of War, check out my "Chaos and Logic Chronicles" series *shameless plug*


	3. Retired James Still Teaches Trainees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorting the wheat from the chaff, MI6 style:
> 
> Time has passed and James has retired from his position as a double-oh. However, he's been hired on to teach up-and-coming agents, because of his skill and expertise. Sometimes, though, those students like to challenge his authority.
> 
> It never ends well.
> 
> Perhaps that's why Q likes to watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe that this idea was shared by [Rigel99](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Rigel99/) on a Facebook page that I follow, which started off with a picture of an older Bond with a beard heading towards silver, but still a dangerous light in his eyes...
> 
> Warnings: older characters, Q is still Quartermaster, established 00Q relationship, young agents can be idiots, teacher!James, swift and well-deserved violence, humor, smut, explicit sexual content

Q leaned back against the wall of the gym, sipping his tea and watching as the James vs Student situation escalated. "We're going to be late for lunch, aren't we?" he sighed. Instead of answering, James simply took off his jacket, and Q sighed, knowing what the students didn't: Just because Professor Bond wore a prim, proper suit-jacket in the rec-room didn't mean that Professor Bond was unprepared for athletic activities.

Q also knew, from intimate experience, that there was nothing prim or proper about James once things got heated.

"This should be good," Q murmured to himself. He flipped open his phone to push back their lunch reservations.

The fact that James was removing his jacket was a bad sign, but everyone in the room was too stupid to see it. Q put his phone back away and quietly shook his head, because the ignorance of James' students to such simple signs of danger meant that there was no hope for them. The students were always wanting to know what they were being tested on, or what exams they had to prepare for, but in reality: _James Bond_ was the exam. And this batch was failing miserably. Q would have felt sorry for them, but Q made a habit of never wasting pity on stupid people.

The young rooster who was strutting around in front of Bond right now clearly didn't recognize a hawk when he saw one. Which was just sad. Even animals had the sense to recognize a predator in the room. "My rabbit is officially smarter than you," Q said.

The student ceased smirking at and teasing James and instead whipped his attention to Q, frowning. "What?"

Q just smiled and watched as James exploded into motion.

 In under three seconds, James was still again, and there was a heap of groaning idiot at his feet. James still had his coat over one arm, and a cool, indifferent look in his face. The rest of the class looked deeply troubled by this new development. "Hopefully everyone was taking notes," James said in his most professorial tone, light and benign. When he looked up, he smiled, and for the first time, it looked like perhaps the new recruits saw something sharklike in the brief flash of teeth. "I think that's about enough for this morning. We'll reconvene after lunch."

Biting back a smile, Q watched as all the young recruits nodded their agreement hurriedly. As James turned and walked off, the youths peered at their fallen comrade but didn't touch him, perhaps afraid that some of his ill-fortune would rub off on them.

As James got closer, Q scoffed quietly enough that only the ex-double-oh (could anyone really be an _ex_ -double-oh?) could hear, "You didn't even need to take off your coat, did you?"

James feigned offense. "It's an expensive coat."

"Admit it. You were showing off."

James smiled, tilted his head, and seemed to consider before answering lightly, "It _did_ add effect, didn't it?"

"It was wasted on your audience," Q lamented, then turned and slipped his arm through James'. Personally, he liked that James' jacket was off, because it meant he could feel that warm, familiar heat through the silk of his lover's shirt. Yes, all of James was definitely wasted on this young and idiotic audience.

As they walked out of the gym, Q realized something. "Shit."

"What?"

"I rescheduled our lunch reservations for 30 minutes from now."

"You seriously thought that it would take me 30 minutes to sort out that situation?" James asked in a deadpanned tone.

"I've learned not to underestimate the resilience of stupidity." Q sighed, reached for his phone, "I suppose I could call them back again..."

James turned and caught Q's hand. When the Quartermaster looked up, eyebrows lifted in question, he saw something ageless and fire-hot in the blue eyes looking at him, and James' smile was the same smile he'd always had - the one that promised trouble.

Probably the only thing that had really changed over the years was that Q had grown increasingly fond of Bond's brand of trouble.

"Or," James suggested at a low rumble, stepping closer, until they were chest to chest and James was idly considering Q's mouth, "we could make good use of those extra thirty minutes."

Ten minutes later saw them both in Q's office, seriously misusing Q's desk. Trousers and pants down around his ankles, Q gasped as James slid into him, lube making an obscene sound between them. James's hand smoothed heavily up Q's back, rucking his shirt, before landing on the nape of Q's neck and squeezing with a strength that hadn't waned over the years. "I'm glad you started keeping a supply of lube in your office," James panted. His grip on Q's neck was like a lion's jaws, but the thumb he moved to swipe behind Q's ear was loving.

"I figured-" Q said, breaking off to release a quiet whine as James shifted his weight slightly, the movement translated to the cock in Q's arse. Stubbornly, Q finished his sentence, "-That with you teaching now, you'd be eager to burn off some energy at some point."

"Are you saying I didn't want to do that before?" James's words were mild, but they tightened to a growl at the end as James punctuated the sentence with a hard thrust. Q gasped at the feeling of Bond withdrawing and then bottoming out again, the desk giving a shudder beneath him.

"I figured you'd be _more_ eager," Q amended, before his voice devolved into a low, slow, elated moan at the sensation of James moving again.  There was no need to mention that teaching up-and-coming agents was frustrating as hell, and that Q perhaps found it a bit sexy when James vacillated between patient teacher and scary as fuck - a combination that made rendezvous like this increasingly appealing. Sometimes Q rather liked it when students underestimated James Bond - because the results were always exciting to watch. And maybe it was a bit of a turn on to realize that those students now realized that their teaching - Q's _lover_ \- was something to be afraid of.

Not if you were Q, though. Q got a free pass, a permanent truce. It was pretty amazing, knowing that the same man who had killed hundreds - and could still kill, if he needed, if he wanted - still leaned over Q to nip gently at his shoulder-blades through the material of his shirt, and angled his thrusts so that it was just as good for both of them.

Q came with James leaning over him, their hands tangled together on the desk by Q's head, each others' names on their lips.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know that at least some of those young agents probably saw James leaving Q's office, and are jealous as hell, because not only does Q look sated as can be - but James looks like the cat that just got all the cream ;)


	4. Without Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last thing Bond expects when he comes back from being shot off that train is to find out that they have a new Quartermaster - and that new Quartermaster is mute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of my favorite ficlets so far <3 
> 
> Tags/Warnings: mute!Q (but he still has perfect hearing), pre-relationship 00Q, emotional hurt/comfort, Bond is mourning M, Mallory is the new M, protective!James

When Bond got back from the bridge fiasco and the fall of MI6 headquarters, he was ready for anything.  Somehow, ‘anything’ did not include a Quartermaster who didn’t talk.  

‘Didn’t’ wasn’t the wrong word.  007 rather liked people who didn’t talk, because as a rule, one learned more by listening than by talking, and overly chatty people were either nervous or trying to sell him something, in James’s experience.  The new Q, though, was another story entirely, and one that James was not prepared for when he turned up at the art museum.

Staring at the old warship in the picture and feeling depression settling around him like a wet blanket he just couldn’t shake, James scowled and just barely noticed the sound of scuffing  footsteps before a lanky, dark-haired young man sat down next to him.  Surprised by the intrusion into his personal space, James just stared and blinked as the young man slid a case under their shared bench, pushed his glasses further up his nose with a gloved hand, and then extended his other hand without warning to unfold right under Bond’s nose.  

Bond tensed, muscles already wired for trouble, but it only took him a split-second to recognize an MI6-issued ear-piece on the other man’s grey-gloved palm.  The bespectacled fellow didn’t say anything, just watched him calmly, and flicked his eyes impatiently to the earpiece.  Only because James was used to incongruous and mysterious situations did he reach forward after a long, slow moment of judging the situation with his gaze, determining that the fellow next to him wasn’t armed, and if the case was a bomb, then he’d no doubt find out soon enough.  Besides, given the proximity, it would blow them both up, not just him.  “Fine then, whatever game this is, we’ll play it your way,” James murmured before plucking the earpiece up and sticking it into his ear.  

Immediately, the young man next to him relaxed, mouth twitching unexpectedly into something that wasn’t yet a smile.  More interestingly, though, his hands began moving.  Quick, deft gestures that had Bond frowning and growing wary all over again - but nothing compared to how James jumped when an electronic voice began coming out of the earpiece a half-beat after the hand-motions began: “I. Thought. You. Would. Never. Put. It. In.”  The words were broken and mechanical, but there was a pause that denoted the cessation of one sentence and a start of another, matching a pause in the other man’s moving fingers.  “You. Agents. Always. So. Cautious.”

“You don’t live as long as I do otherwise,” James muttered back on reflex even as he glowered and just generally bristled, not sure what was going on and not liking it when he didn’t understand.  However, some things were starting to become clear…  “You’re the one talking, aren’t you?” he asked cautiously, tapping the earpiece to indicate what he was referring to when he said ‘talking.’  

Everyone else in the museum paid them no mind, but the dark-haired young man smiled a bit more, exuding a certain amount of relief.  His hands lifted and moved again, quick twitches and sweeps that reminded Bond of a bird flexing its wings for flight.  “Yes.  I.  Designed.  The.  Program.  To.  Translate…”  The man’s expression faltered, grew uncertain and then frustrated, and Bond heard a moment of static through the earpiece as his new and strange companion just pointed one gloved hand to the other, then moved the fingers of that hand.  “B.  S.  L,” the earpiece spat out the letters, and it all fell into place.  

“You’re mute,” Bond said, blinking.

The young man’s mouth quirked, a dry expression even as the voice in the earpiece remained unrelentingly robotic.  “Yes.  But.  Not.  Disabled.”  A pause in the hands and the voice.  “I.  Am.  Your.  New….”  The frustration was back, but this time the young man kept moving his hands - but the earpiece just fed static and an occasional beep that reminded James of unresponsive computers.  007 had the amused impression that his companion would have growled if he had more vocal capacity, as he briefly dropped his hands and glared at Bond’s left ear, where the earpiece was wedged.  “Still.  Glitchy,” the earpiece said next, while the young man signed a bit stiffly, “I.  Must.  Expand.  The.  Vocabulary.  But.”  Now one hand was extended in a more familiar gesture, and James reached out slowly to grip it, his distrust and edginess fading away inexplicably to charmed amusement even before he felt the strangeness of the other man’s gloves.  It felt as if there were wires and diodes within the cloth - which perhaps explained how his movements were somehow being translated, however poorly, into audible words.  One-handed, the signing continued, “Call.  Me.  Q.”  He ended by simply holding his free hand, index and thumb pointed to the floor, the other fingers curled against his palm.  

And that was how Bond met the new Quartermaster of MI6, a mute who not only had the skills to make himself a voice, but the determination and audacity to show it off to the most recalcitrant agent of MI6, even though 007 was barely cleared for duty and the [SignAloud](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l01sdzJHCCM) gloves were just a prototype.

~^~

By the time MI6 was recovering from the Skyfall debacle, and the fall of M, its greatest bulwark, Q’s SignAloud technology had reached a point where it was incredibly easy to forget that the Quartermaster was a mute.  Its vocabulary was massive and flexible, and James soon found out that it could swear; Q’s gloves connected so well to the program now that when his emotions showed in his hands, it showed in his electronic voice, too, so that fellow MI6 employees could get the benefit of Q’s temper, his praise, or his surprisingly dry humor.  James got an equal mix of all three, and had found his heart warmed by Q’s pure resourcefulness and doggedness.  It was easy to look at Q’s sparse frame and bookish look and think that he was a pushover, but in James’s opinion, anyone who did a fraction of what Q did was made of unkillable thistles and stern steel.  

But even thistles could be damaged and steel bent, and the hardest blow to MI6’s mute Quartermaster came not long after M’s funeral, as the higher-ups were trying to sort things out and regain order - and were eager to place blame.  

Perhaps James would have been the first target, considering his unorthodox methods and ultimate failure to protect the leader of MI6.  However, it was dangerous to attack an agent with a licence to kill, even by the most political means.  No, much easier to attack a Quartermaster who couldn’t speak.  

It was all a major clusterfuck.  The funeral had been the day before and James was contemplating Scotch for breakfast even as a voice that sounded annoying like M told him that if he destroyed himself he’d be betraying a lot of people in his life - both alive and dead.  Annoying how M could make him behave even from beyond the grave.  As James pushed the Scotch away and went for toast instead, his phone buzzed.  It was Tanner, very worried.  People had barged in an arrested Q for supposedly conspiring with Raoul Silva.  

While Tanner assured James that things would be sorted out (the charges were preposterous, and there was no real proof behind them, just lots of politics and hotheads), the agent dressed hurriedly, grabbing his keys and his coat before the phone-call ended.  Tanner’s last remarks were the most telling: Tanner and Moneypenny were working to sort this out, but while they were doing that, Q desperately needed a friend.

James was in too much of a rush to think about what it meant that he’d apparently come up first on the list of ‘friends.’  How had they become friends?  Was it the first night after James’ return, when Q had turned up at his flat with a knowing expression and a bottle of M’s favorite brand of whiskey?  Was it the day at the funeral, when James had been just about crawling out of his skin with anger and grief, and Q had appeared like a ghost at his elbow, sharing his umbrella when the rain started?  Was it when they’d both left the funeral early, and had instead spent the next three hours drinking at the seediest bar James could find, until they were both so drunk that SignAloud program became useless as Q’s hands grew clumsy?

Q was still at MI6.  This had clearly been a rush-job, the actions of an impetuous political body who wanted to show that they weren’t afraid to act - even if they had nothing to act on, not really.  Tanner had informed James of exactly where Q was in the holding cells, so the agent made a beeline towards his goal like a shark to blood, radiating his own brand of determination.  A few people tried to question him and stop him, but 00-agents were not easy men to impede.  In 007’s defense, he didn’t hurt anyone.  However, he made it very clear that if one more person tried to get in his way, they’d learn what it meant to get on the bad side of an agent who looked Death in the eye on a regular basis.  Perhaps everyone also realized that this was James Bond, 007, the agent who’d been with M until the end, and was mourning her like the eye of a storm: with so much quiet and calm that you almost - _almost_ \- forgot that there was a storm on all sides, waiting to crash in.

Apparently Q had been deemed quite a security threat, because not only had he been put in a holding cell, but there had been enacted a strict ‘no tech’ rule - they’d disarmed Q just like they’d disarm an agent, with a mind towards each’s expertise.  The problem, James saw immediately as he approached the plexiglass front of the simple, square room, was that some of Q’s tech functioned as a way to connect Q to the world.  Whether it was on purpose or not, Q had been stripped of his speech, and James’s first thought was that Q’s hands looked incredibly vulnerable and naked without their gloves on.

Q looked panicked.  James demanded to be let into the holding cell, and even though the guards stubbornly insisted that they’d have to close the door behind him - and lock him in, too - James didn’t care, because he’d never seen Q so openly frightened.  For all of his youth and the fact that he looked like a mouse amidst hawks in MI6, Q had always been a font of calmness and stability.  He was unflappable.  He’d come to James’ aid right from the start without anything but the most token hesitation, and he’d been brave enough to approach James after everything had all gone wrong and 007 was one big mass of self-recrimination and impotent anger.  

With this knowledge of how Q usually was, it hurt to see him now: Q looked younger and smaller than usual, the whites of his eyes showing like a spooked animal and his breathing too fast.  He’d been effectively muted, especially since everyone had gotten so used to Q’s SignAloud tech (which now connected to a speaker, precluding the need for an earpiece even) that few of them had felt the need to learn sign language.  James had most certainly not had time to learn much beyond the basic signs that all agents knew, but even if he had known some B.S.L., he doubted that he could have translated any of the frantic slashing and jerking of Q’s hands.  James had seen panic attacks before, and could see that Q was heading for one if he wasn’t there already.  

Instincts took over.  Not the same instincts that told James where to aim his Walther when presented with a moving target, or when to duck into an alley when he sensed someone following, but other instincts that had perhaps been buried deep for a long time - or perhaps had been growing slowly over the past weeks.  As the doors sealed behind them, James paid the outside world no heed and instead strode up to Q with swift, determined steps.  “Slow down, love,” he found himself saying, low and easy, a voice he vaguely remembered… his father, speaking to his horse after a bad storm… his mother, speaking to him when he’d awoken from a bad dream.  Avoiding the desperately gesticulating hands, James got his own hands on Q’s shoulders and went on steadily, “I can’t hear you when you talk that fast.”

Just as James didn’t overthink the fact that he’d just called his Quartermaster ‘love,’ he didn’t pause to ponder why he’d said the word ‘hear’ to a person who was mute.  Fortunately, Q didn’t seem to mind - in fact, Q’s face crumpled into an expression of agonized relief.  Clearly, he was just happy that someone was finally ‘listening’ to him again.  

Q’s hands stopped twitching and he went willingly as James pulled him forward, Q’s tousled head of dark hair soon tucked beneath James’ chin.  There were no vocalizations, of course, but James could feel the little jerks of Q’s shoulders within the circle of his arms, and felt tears smearing against his throat.  Still, when Q lifted one hand (the rest of him not moving, a slightly awkward position that nonetheless felt right) and slowly signed, James was able to translate “Thank you.”

“No need to thank me, Q,” James rumbled back, and felt the little gasp as Q realized that he’d been understood, that he wasn’t voiceless right now.  Both of Q’s arms swept back in, this time to wrap around Bond’s ribcage in a fierce hug.  James gave a tighter squeeze in return, smiling one of the easiest smiles he’d managed in weeks, maybe even longer.  

~^~

It took over three hours to get Q released, although the time paid off - because not only was Q released, but the charges were reluctantly dropped.  Moneypenny and Tanner were a force of nature when they teamed up.  

James stayed with Q the whole time.  There was a little cot in the holding cell, and they sat together on it, starting out shoulder to shoulder as Q recovered from the scare of having his ‘voice’ taken away.  James didn’t begrudge him the comfort, and didn’t say anything as Q’s head slipped onto his shoulder with a small, still-troubled sigh.  Without really knowing where the urge came from, James began talking, telling quiet, short stories - about M.  While James talked about the past with increasing ease (and also watched the curious guards on the other side of the plexiglass, giving them lethal glares that soon had them skittering away), Q started to relax.  His breathing, which had still been a bit too shallow and quick, slowed and deepened.  James glanced down a few times to see if the boffin had actually fallen asleep, but no: his eyes were half-lidded but focused forward, and sometimes he tipped his head in a little nod.  Sometimes his hands on his lap moved, and sometimes James was able to understand a quick comment - when he couldn’t understand, he found he could often intuit.  That easy (if sometimes faulty) understanding relaxed Q more.  

When Q seemed stable again, James coaxed the Quartermaster to sit up, and then to turn and face him.  Soon they were both sitting cross-legged on the cot like oversized children, knees touching and Q’s face quite eloquently saying, ‘ _What the devil are you on about, 007_?’  

James just smiled a small, secretive smile and commanded, “Say something, Q.”

Perplexed, the Quartermaster started to raise his hands, but James caught them - gently.  Q’s hands were as precious to him as James’ guns were to him, and therefore the agent implicitly understood the need to be careful with them.  “No, not with your hands,” James corrected, then, just as frustration started to show in the purse of Q’s lips and the beetling of his brows, the agent elaborated, “Mouth the words.”  The eyebrows jumped upwards.  James’ smile broadened proudly, and he gave a gentle squeeze of his hands, feeling delicate wrist-bones press against his palms.  “I can lipread,” he finally gave out the piece of information that he’d never told Q before.  There’d been no need until now.  

Q struggled at first, his mouth not used to the shapes.  But James was patient, and he’d started to recognize the little twitches of Q’s fingers that meant he was frustrated but not ready to give up.  “Stubborn,” James murmured at one point, after a little flutter of Q’s left hand.  Q looked startled and then beamed.  

‘ _We’re the same that way_ ,’ Q managed to mouth a moment later.  When James understood and chuckled in response, Q’s smile transformed into something more cheeky and wry.  His lips moved around the word, clarifying, _‘Stubborn_.’

“Yes, we’re both stubborn,” James agreed, clasping Q’s knee and rubbing it with his thumb in silent congratulations.  In return, Q put on his own hands over James’s scarred knuckles, fingertips tracing once over the tendons.  Q had graceful, artistic hands beneath those gloves.

Until Q was released and his gloves returned, the two spent the time not only chatting, but realizing just how much could be spoken in silence.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The SignAloud technology is actually real. I've obviously tweaked it a bit (on the assumption that Q would totally improve on this design), but here's the video that started it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l01sdzJHCCM
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed! It wasn't a smutty ficlet, but I was feeling in the mood for some good old fashioned cuddles :)


	5. Blindsided

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q's latest technological experiment leaves him blind in one eye - it's only temporary, but it's still as frustrating as fuck... especially when a certain 00-agent is added to the mix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update for New Year's Eve! ^_^ 
> 
> Tags/Warnings: temporarily disabled character (poor Q loses the use of one eye for a week); hurt/comfort; Q is in need of hugs; sneaky 00-agents; protective Bond; pre-00Q-relationship

When Q finally succeeded in developing contact lenses capable of transmitting photographic data, the triumph was a bit marred by the fact that the test-run backfired, and he nearly ruined his entire career by going blind.  

In Q’s defense, he’d only had one contact lens prototype in - so he’d only willfully endangered _half_ of his eyesight.  Against his defense, however, he shouldn’t have been trying them out on himself to begin with, but it had been 4:00 am and he’d been flushed with sleep-deprived triumph, and there hadn’t been anyone else around to play guinea pig.  Thankfully, Medical kept longer hours than Q-branch, so when something went wrong, Q at least had another department to run to for assistance.

He was given an incredibly stern lecture about putting himself in risky situations; although everyone could see that MI6’s youngest Quartermaster had honestly scared himself enough that he’d never do something so stupid again.  Medical told him that he’d been lucky: while he’d been ignoring safety protocols with unproven tech, they’d been working on projects of their own, and thankfully some of it was further along in the developmental process and therefore safe to use on patients.  Long-story-short, Medical had something on hand that would heal the extensive damage that Q had done to his right eye.  The Quartermaster (rattled and in fact shaking, and immensely glad that none of his minions were around to see him like this) lay down very patiently as a clear goo was applied directly to his eye.  He managed to keep a British stiff upper lip as he was informed that the healing process would be slow.  Q wouldn’t be half-blind for life - but he would be without the use of that eye for a week at least.  MI6’s Medical branch was on the cutting edge of its field, but Q had really hurt himself quite badly, and even the most effective miracles took time.  

After being reassured that his eye would at least _appear_ normal by tomorrow, if he kept applying the additional eyedrops Medical provided, Q gave a rather robotic nod to show that he understood.  At his behest, someone drove him home, and also agreed that confidentiality would be maintained - the med-staff who’d treated Q would have to inform M, of course, but beyond that, Q’s mishap would not be shared.  

It was Q’s decision to otherwise keep the whole matter a secret.  Being the youngest Quartermaster in MI6 history had its drawbacks, after all, a certain amount of scrutiny being one of them: besides his own staff, there were many people constantly keeping the young boffin under a microscope, waiting for signs of incompetency.  Since MI6 basically employed bipedal sharks (a fairly accurate analogy for 00-agents in particular), it didn’t take much for M to acquiesce to Q’s request for secrecy.  They both knew what sharks did when there was blood in the water, and M didn’t want her Quartermaster ending up as chum.  He’d just done something stupid, yes, but by and large he was a genius and an asset to MI6.

After proving that he could at least do certain facets of his job - Q could have coded blind, and quite a lot of his job boiled down to typing, which he was still immaculately skilled at - Q was allowed back to work with the promise that he’d avoid anything that required depth perception until Medical declared him hale and whole again.  The departmental buzzards could keep circling until the apocalypse.  Q-branch wasn’t going to show weakness.  

Ironically, the trickiest part of the whole situation was explaining away his unexpected, one-day absence.  After telling everyone that he’d taken the day to visit a family member who had come to visit unexpectedly, Q got one day off to recover his nerve if not yet his eyesight.  When he returned a day later, it was relatively easy to relegate jobs to different people so that Q no longer had his hands on anything that required binocular vision to succeed at.  

Q looked just as he always had: capable, confident, and as professional as the Queen’s own.  His hazel eyes surveyed his domain from behind his glasses with hawk-like vigilance, the blind right one moving just as effectively as the left.  Medical’s ‘magic eye-good’ had sunk into the eye itself to do its work, leaving no sign that anything was amiss - even the residual redness in the sclera had cleared up while Q had been on his day off.  Q refused to admit that he was still deeply rattled by the whole situation, and went about his work more or less like usual.  

The only real problem remaining was that Agent-bloody-007, from day one, kept coming up on Q’s right side like a blond-haired, cat-footed, blind-spot-seeking missile.  

The first time it happened, Q was so startled and caught off-guard that he jumped a good foot and nearly dropped the prototype he was carrying to R. (He couldn’t work on it himself, not without proper depth-perception).  Q actually swore, something that professionalism usually kept him from doing.  Then, when he spun far enough to capture Bond within the range of his good eye, he nearly punched the agent in the face, because 007 was playing innocent rather poorly, amusement in the crinkling of his eyes.  “Did I catch you at a bad moment, Q?” he asked, as if this were just another instance of Q’s tunnel-vision getting the best of him and not a case of literal vision problems being the culprit.  

As he glared and tried to collect himself and slow his panicked heart, all Q could think was, ‘ _How did he already know_?’

It kept happening throughout the day.  Bond just happened to be between missions, which always made him a nuisance to London in general but to Q-branch most of all - probably because Medical threatened to give him shots and Psych likewise promised to evaluate him if he so much as stepped foot into their branch.  Usually Q tolerated the man, but today - on the first day of Q trying to act normal while also dealing with the crippling, panic-inducing sensation of being half-blind for the near future - Q sincerely wanted to dump James Bond into a deep, dark hole and leave him there until Q was less blind.  Less vulnerable.  007 literally approached on Q’s right side exclusively from that moment onwards, and Q never quite managed not to jump and have a miniature heart-attack every single time.  

And, because Bond was a world-class liar, the 00-agent always managed to wear a facade that said he had no idea what he was doing.  Bond seemed to think it all quite funny, but Q was anything but amused.  

Finally, Q couldn’t take it anymore.  It was stressful enough to maintain an appearance of normalcy and do his job without that menace of a man like a land-mine in his branch, just waiting for the next opportunity to jump up and blow Q’s hard-won tranquility and self-control sky-high.  So, after Bond spoke up from somewhere on his blind right side for almost the dozenth time that day, Q rounded on him like before, but this time fixed him with a look so scalding that Bond actually took a half-step back.  “My office.  Now, 007,” Q said shortly.  His tone, so quiet and low, must have been like the rumble of an earthquake, because most of his branch fell silent, and 007’s eyebrows climbed uneasily up towards his hairline.  Q didn’t give him time to question the order, and instead spun on his heel and headed towards his office.  He very nearly screamed in frustrated fury when his right ear just faintly detected the sound of 007 falling into step… behind and to his _right_.

Thankful that his office was soundproof, Q barely waited until the door was closed before facing 007 and releasing all of the pent-up tension that had been riding him all day, made worse by the 00-agent’s callous insistence of playing upon his weaknesses.  He knew that 00-agents were trained to go for the throat, but Q had thought that they were beyond that - if not friends, than at least coworkers who didn’t take advantage of each other like enemies.  “Who told you?” the younger man barked.  His hands, to his embarrassment, shook even after they closed into fists, and he could feel how precariously close he was to falling apart.

007 had leaned back against the door, crossing his arms in a manner that looked quite defensive.  The belligerence in his posture translated into his tone like frost edging a cold window, “Told me what?”

Refusing to admit that this whole thing was leaving him so stressed that he could cry, Q just blinked once, gritted his teeth, then unclamped his jaw enough to spit back with more bravery than he felt, “You know what.”  When he got no reply besides a shuttered expression and another measured blink, Q snarled out the rest, “That as of yesterday I’m blind in one eye, you bloody bastard!”

Bond’s guardedly recalcitrant expression fell instantly to be replaced by pale-faced shock, and his arms dropped as if he’d been stabbed.  In that instant, Q recalculated the odds of all Bond’s previous expressions of innocence being true, and that 007 really had had no idea what was going on... until now.

What followed was somewhere between an apology and a whole new shouting match, as Q regretted his stroppiness and James reacted rather poorly to the shock of finding out that Q presently had monocular vision.  00-agents lived and died via the element of surprise, and Q had definitely just surprised the hell out of him, and 007 naturally didn’t like it.  

Somewhere in the midst of demanding to know what the fuck had happened, Bond lost hold of his surprised temper and ended up crowding Q against his desk instead.  It seemed threatening at first, when the agent went silent without warning but didn’t stop glowering thunderously, and then suddenly got up into Q’s personal space.  It took only a second, however, for Q to realize that Bond was going through the motions of checking him over - checking for injury, even though the only damage present was the lost eyesight that Q had already told him about.  “Bond, really, it’s fine-” Q tried to wave the larger man off, even as James’s hand caught his chin and proceeded to tip Q’s head this way and that, grimly and almost furiously focused on Q’s right eye.  Q couldn’t recall ever seeing Bond this touch-friendly with someone who wasn’t leggy and female, but apparently Q really had shocked Bond - which seemed like fair play after the last few hours.  When Bond gave no indication that he was even listening, Q gave up and sat on the front of his desk.  He knew what an agent looked like in ‘mission-mode,’ and apparently he’d become James’s mission right now.  There was nothing for it but to patiently endure it.  It wasn’t exactly unpleasant; for all that Bond’s hands were calloused, they were gentle.

“How did you keep doing that then?” Q asked after the quiet had stretched and settled.  He managed to extract his head from 007’s grasp only after Bond had realized that there really wasn’t much to investigate - Q’s eye didn’t look obviously abnormal, despite it not working, and there was no other sign of injury.  Bond just frowned at him, so Q reiterated while gently hooking his fingers around James’s wrist and pushing it further away from his face.  “I mean, if you really had no idea that I’d had this accident, then explain all those times you snuck up on me today.  Literally _every time_ you came up to me, it was on my right side.”  Even if this had all been coincidental, that didn’t erase how fragile those moments had made Q feel, or that he didn’t understand how they’d kept happening if not on purpose.  

In response to Q’s tight frown and sharp look, Bond’s face flushed, a remarkably candid response for a man usually in control of everything.  Grimacing and glancing away, the 00-agent looked uncomfortable, and the reason for his unease was shown a moment later.  He turned so that he could sit on the desk next to Q ( _not_ on his blind side), folding his arms and saying bluntly, “I have no idea.”  

Aware that 00-agents hated to admit that they didn’t know something, Q sat back more firmly on his desk and just blinked stupidly a few times, coming to the realization that today had really be just one very long misunderstanding - or accident.  A very weird series of accidents, actually, but nothing more malicious than that.  It was vaguely reassuring to realize that James wasn’t actually out to make his day hell, and in fact seemed remarkably contrite now.  

“Bollocks” Q said succinctly, and James just hummed his agreement and nodded.  

“I probably do things like that all the time, but no one’s noticed it,” Bond noted after a moment, brows drawn together and mouth tipped down at the edges in an introspective way.  He glanced at Q, and something very like apology softened his features.  “Sorry, Q.”

“It’s all right,” Q sighed, removing his glasses with one hand so that he could drag the palm of the other unhindered down his face.  It really wasn't all right, of course, because he was still blind in one eye for another week, and if Bond had habits like these, than other agents probably did, too - 007 was just the first one that he’d seen.  “Shit,” Q noted rather listlessly, hand still over his face so that his words were muffled under his wrist and palm, “002 comes back on Thursday.  What do you think the chances are that he hones in on my bad side like a shark for blood in the water, just like you did?”

“Pretty likely,” Bond admitted reluctantly.  

Q dropped his hand and exhaled resignedly again, and was immediately jarred by how unnatural it felt having both eyes covered and unseeing to only one eye now showing him the room.

“Will you still be…?”  James paused and indicated Q’s face vaguely, clearly not sure how to talk about this now.

“A scrawnier, less godly version of Odin?” Q scoffed back with a limp imitation of humor.  “Yes, Medical says that it’ll be until Thursday at least before I’m seeing out of both eyes again.”

“Do you want some help?”

Q once again returned the question with a wry joke, “Are you planning to lend me an eyeball, 007?”  Perhaps the questions softened a bit at the end, though, because he could hear the sincere sympathy in 007’s voice - the kind of compassion that was too well-meant to count as shallow pity.  

Undeterred, surprisingly, James regarded Q thoughtfully and said after a moment, “Not exactly - but how would you like a sort-of-seeing-eye-dog?  Just until Thursday.”

~^~

At first, James’ plan had seemed ridiculous.  Ludicrous.  But also so simple that Q couldn’t really say no to it.  All James proposed to do - and did indeed do - was occupy Q’s blindspot, and quietly guard it.  The offer would have seemed like a laughable joke if it had not been stated with such candor in 007’s tone, so that Q (instead of laughing) was moved to silence and almost to tears.  This was only day one of being half-blind, and it was a living hell for Q, and the thought of someone offering to be a bulwark for his weakspot… it was somehow exactly what Q had wanted without knowing that he had wanted it.  He tried to keep up his usual aplomb and nod, but the Quartermaster  had a feeling that James could tell how close he  was coming to tearing up.  The relief of having help in all of this nearly unhinged him, and for a moment Q just sat where he was, blinking rapidly and fiddling with his glasses.  James eventually reached over and squeezed his shoulder, as if imparting some of his iron strength.  

The only hitch, of course, was trusting James in his blindspot - which, in theory, sounded borderline possible.  007 was a trained assassin-spy with a habit of seducing and/or killing the majority of the people he spent time with, and Q had watched him do so on many occasions, via surveillance cameras.  Therefore, it made Q supremely uneasy at first to walk out into Q-branch and know that James was angling over to walk on his right.  “Just breathe, Q,” 007 murmured just as Q was starting to tense, moving  to turn his head to get a visual on 007 with his good eye.  The voice jolted Q at least, but then it  grounded him, not only letting him know how close James was, but letting him hear how the agent’s voice had slipped into a soothing, supportive baritone.  

It probably looked strange.  Ultimately, Q picked a desk to sit down at and focus on computer-related tasks, but he heard James scoot out a chair and sit to his right - and it was clear that more than a few people stared in befuddlement.  Q purposefully ignored all of it, trying to instead keep his attention on a productive task.  Still, the knowledge that James was somewhere off to his right kept tempting Q to turn his head and catch sight of him, over and over again, because he couldn’t stand not knowing what the man was doing - even after he realized that 007 was basically doing nothing.  If anything, the man looked to be on the verge of dozing, stretched back in his chair with his blue eyes lidded, hands folded across his trim stomach.  Q tried to just accept his presence, but it was a struggle, and the tension made it hard to settle in and work.  

He jumped when something touched his ankle.  Looking down, he saw that it was 007’s shoe.  Swiveling his head until Q’s range of vision could detect Bond, Q gave the man a puzzled glower, but got only a lazy smile in return.  Q tried to shuffle his legs further away, but it was no good; James just slouched more until they were touching again, and all irked noises on Q’s part were ignored.  For some reason, Q stopped before actually telling 007 to respect his personal space.  Instead, the Quartermaster just gave in and accepted it.  Perhaps it was a sign of just how much Q had started to tolerate about 00-agents.

Only later would Q realize that the point of contact _helped_.  He felt the urge to turn his head less and less, and the nagging, nonsensical fear that James had disappeared when he wasn’t looking… began to fade away.  After all, if he still felt James’ shoe against his right ankle, then the agent couldn’t have gone away, could he?  

When Q heard James whistle softly, it didn’t even come as a surprise, but when Q turned to look at him, what he noticed first was a tech analyst approaching from that side, too.  007 gave Q a wink before pretending to fall entirely asleep.  

Insanely grateful for the warning, Q turned and greeted his underling, discussing a project that was starting to look promising but still had some kinks to work out.  While the techie kept glancing nervously at Bond like a cat looking nervously at a nearby, sleeping Rottweiler, Q felt more relaxed than he’d felt all day.  He didn’t quite feel normal, but… this was better.  When the techie eventually returned to work, Q paused a moment, still swiveled so that he was facing the ‘sleeping’ agent.  “Are you sure you don't mind doing this all day?” Q asked quietly but hopefully.

James didn’t even open his eyes.  “Q, I just came back from a mission in Siberia.  I’m too keyed up to sleep, but just too wrung out to go running around London.  A nice, easy task like this is exactly what the doctor ordered.”

Relief painted a smile across Q’s face, and he felt his shoulders ease just a bit more.  “Are you sure?”

“Unless I get called away again,” James amended, but he sounded a bit reluctant when he said that, and although he continued to feign sleep, his mouth tipped down at the edges.  It made Q feel unaccountably proud to realize that 007 wanted to be his ‘seeing-eye-dog’ more than he wanted to get back to his usual job.  

Q turned back to work again, now fully at peace with the blond-haired agent dozing in his blind-spot.  “Thank you,” he whispered.  

When Q purposefully moved his ankle back into the range of 007’s foot, the agent moved just enough to give Q’s calf a little rub.  Most days, Q would have questioned whether that was an appropriate gesture between colleagues, but today, it just made something fond and warm and grateful bloom in his chest.  

~^~

“When everything is back to normal again… could I take you out for drinks?”

“If you’ll tell me how the hell you temporarily blinded yourself in just one eye.”

“...It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got the time.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ending on this one is a bit weak, but I actually have notes tucked away somewhere for a secondary fic along these same lines (Q has one bad/worse eye, 00-agents are trained to go for weaknesses, Q hates it, etc.). So there might actually be a sort-of sequel to this one :) Or, if not an actual sequel (since these are all one-offs), then you might be able to someday expect another fic along the same lines. 
> 
> *scuttles off to get another chapter of "Sciamachy" written*


	6. If Q were a Vulcan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q and Spock have roomed together since they entered the academy, and Q has gotten used to the running feud Spock has with a blond-haired, blue-eyed, incorrigible human named Kirk. Kirk's best friend, though, is a whole different kind of blond-haired, blue-eyed, incorrigible kind of trouble, but Q's not sure what to make of him yet...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this all started when a Facebook friend said she needed help talking her brain out of a story idea - and, of course, all of us on that page are enablers, we did the exact opposite. This ficlet was my contribution to the post. A million thanks to [Anake14](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Anake14/pseuds/Anake14), who started this bunny, and managed to get me writing in the StarTrek fandom when nothing else could <3 She deserves all the love, so please pop over and visit.
> 
> Tags for: StarTrek crossover; Q is half-Vulcan; Bond is an enigma; Kirk is a little shit; Spock's "not feelings" sometimes look a lot like feelings; sweet-cinnamon-bun!Q; Q might have a crush; canon-typical violence; xenophobia; one episode of bullying; hurt/comfort; telepathic!Q; Bond is a surprisingly conscientious and good dude, especially when dealing with traumatized boffins

"It's utterly illogical that you wish to befriend that human." Spock's voice was implacable but calm. He continued to go through homework assignments on his tablet, prioritizing and triaging each by order of difficulty and time-limit.

Q stood by the window to their shared quarters and resolutely did not fidget, because Vulcans did not fidget. Technically, they both should have had excuses, being only part Vulcan, but somehow Spock managed to control himself much more easily. Q's eyes flicked alertly across the grassy leisure area below, where Starfleet students hurried or loitered beneath classes. "But he's interesting," Q argued, thinking that he saw two blond heads amidst the students. His gaze stopped wandering, fixating instead. "And I've never seen anyone consider putting two warp cores together."

Spock stopped moving, and an almost imperceptible frown pulled at his mouth. Then he went back to his tasks, replying coolly, "That's because such an idea stands a high chance of detonating both cores and wiping out anything within range."

"But James said there was a small chance-"

"Q."

"Hmm?" Q turned and feigned innocence and aloofness as best he could. It was hard. He was the only thing odder than a half-human Vulcan, being half-Betazed, and he had to be constantly alert to keep himself under control.

Spock's expression was non-judgmental, but it was very serious. "Leave the humans alone."

Q narrowly resisted the urge to huff, and went back to looking out the window, imagining blond hair, blue eyes, and ridiculous, rounded ears... "You're just saying that because James' friend beat your Kobayashi Maru test."

~^~

Spock and Kirk had gotten into a fight. Q was a bit shocked, because he hadn't found Kirk all that annoying, and he'd always been a bit in awe of the older half-Vulcan's steely self-control. Yet, now Kirk and Spock were duking it out on the grass, and other students were a bit too stunned to try and break it up.

Unsure whether it was safe to break it up himself, Q circled around and nearly bumped into James, who was watching it all with his arms folded and absolutely no surprise on his face. Without looking away from the fight to Q, James addressed him, "It was bound to happen eventually."

A bit surprised at being talked to (Q hadn't thought that James Bond even knew what he looked like), Q hesitantly took up a standing position next to the slightly taller human. He tried to mimic the man's aloofness, although he figured it would be un-Vulcan of him to copy the small, wry smirk. "Really?" he asked in his best uninterested voice.

"It was either fighting or fucking, really," James replied as if he were commenting on the weather, and Q couldn't help the little coughing noise of shock that he made in response. Undaunted, James angled his head and considered, "I thought that it would come to a head sooner, but I guess I forgot to take into account that your friend is a Vulcan."

"Half-Vulcan," Q corrected a bit numbly, still shocked by the involuntary mental image of Spock and Kirk... Q gave his head a rapid shake, but that didn't help, because in his shock, his telepathy had slipped its leash a bit - and as it flexed, Q was involuntarily treated to the same mental image _from James' thoughts_. Before Q could recover, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and James saying like they'd been partners-in-crime for ages, "Come on. Let's split them up before someone important sees, or before your half-Vulcan friend uses his half-Vulcan strength to pound my friend's face in."

Q wasn't used to being touched, and usually avoided it... but the brief pressure on his shoulder had left him unexpectedly warm. It took him a beat to get his legs working, trotting after Bond, who was already wading into the fight.  It took a bit of doing, but they managed to manhandle the two combatants apart.

Spock had a split lip and looked more emotive than Q had ever seen him - which was still fairly expressionless, but with such a frost-burn quality to his glare that Q would have rather stood in front of a phase-canon than in Spock's line of sight. Spock's tightly leashed wrath, however, was all for Kirk, and since Kirk presently had one eye swelling shut and his head tipped back to keep his bleeding nose to a minimum, he hadn't noticed. James, walking under Kirk's right arm, took one look at Spock's unwavering, deadly silent expression and raised both eyebrows. "Good luck with that one," he said, and it took Q a second to realize that James was talking to him.

"Uh, you too?" He didn't know how to respond in a situation like this.

Bond just smirked, chuckling lowly, and Q felt his ears twitch at how pleasing the cadence and tone was.

"Jim'll behave," James replied jovially, slapping his free hand against Kirk's chest. Kirk cursed and then whimpered. Unperturbed, James just grinned wider and said, "Won't you, _James_?"

"Fuck off, _James_." It sounded garbled, probably because Kirk's nose was broken.

Q felt the need to point that out. "Mr. Bond... I think your friend's nose is broken."

"James is just fine," Bond replied, and Q couldn't tell whether Bond was referring to his friend's condition or whether he was giving Q permission to switch from 'Bond' to 'James' when they spoke.  It was all very confusing.

However, at the same time that Kirk bared bloodied teeth and snarled, "You can tell your pointy-eared monster-!"

Not unsurprisingly, Spock lunged, his fury having settled into something cold and probably vaguely logical. Kirk, still utterly illogical, opened one gimlet eye and braced himself doggedly. Fortunately, Q was pretty fast, and managed to get in Spock's way. The force with which Spock moved was still enough to slid Q backward three steps before grinding to a halt - and the only reason that Q managed to halt instead of be plowed over entirely, he realized a bit later, was because he'd been pushed close enough for Bond to spread one hand across his back. Between Q's strength and Bond's, they managed to hold Spock back.

Q froze, reminding himself that there were layers of cloth between his skin and Bond's. He had to repeat that to himself, even as his telepathy tried to uncoil again - he could keep it under control, but not if there was skin-to-skin contact. There was a reason that Q was wearing gloves even now, and that he had a uniform with a high collar on it. Bond wasn't getting past those layers right now, but Q could acutely feel the strength of the man as the heat and pressure of his hand seemed to sink right into Q's back, a handprint between his shoulder-blades.

"Spock, we have to go back to our rooms," Q hissed, as calmly as possible. Spock's eyes flicked to him finally, and it was encouraging to see that the anger had either disappeared a bit... or was being better hidden. The other Vulcan's nostrils were flared, his breathing fast, but he at least appeared to be listening. So Q firmed up his voice and added sternly, "Getting expelled over a brawl is illogical."

Kirk grumbled from somewhere behind Q, "Your _face_ is illogical." Then he yelped, as presumably Bond did something.

Fortunately, Q had gotten through to Spock - or perhaps it was the bit of shouting coming from across the green. Spock's head lifted alertly at the same time that Q turned, superior hearing meaning that they zeroed in on the sound a beat before James and Kirk turned their heads. "I think that means it's time for us all to get scarce," Bond opined. His hand left Q's back, but only for a moment - that it patted his shoulder again twice. "Nice meeting you, Q."

"How does he know my na-?" Q began, but by then, it was Spock pushing him into motion, the two groups splitting up before the campus authorities could close in.

~^~

"Kirk is an idiot."

"I think his test scores are a bit too high for him to be accurately labeled as an idiot."

"Then his wasting of that intelligence disgusts me."

"I do admit that his insults were a bit... childish," Q tried to mollify his roommate even as he wet a cloth to try and get some of the blood off Spock's mouth and chin. They should probably go to the medical facilities, but that would mean explaining to the doctors what had happened - and Spock was a pathetically bad liar. Q was better, but it wasn't very Vulcan to lie, and he was acutely aware of how un-Vulcan he already was. At least Spock wasn't acting so unnaturally furious anymore, instead back to his usual, logical self - although he was still rather peevish, and sometimes Q saw a muscle in his cheek bunch.

"Thank you for removing me from that situation," Spock eventually had the ambivalence to say. Q nodded because that was the correct answer to such a statement, then jumped as the door chimed. Uncertain whether to get it or not, Q handed Spock the damp cloth and just stared at the door. Spock was, as always, scrupulously careful not to touch Q's fingers, because his gloves had been removed to deal with the water. When the door chimed again, annoyingly, Spock made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl, so Q offered to get the door.

He didn't know what he expected when he opened it, but James Bond was not one of those things.

Q had made sure to only allow the door partway open, to prevent anyone from catching a glimpse of Spock with emerald blood smeared down his chin. Now he was glad he'd done that because it meant his body blocked Spock from looking out, and seeing the friend of his - apparently - arch-nemesis. Fortunately, Bond hadn't brought Kirk along, and was standing idly at ease, looking pleased that Q had answered.

"Bond," Q squeaked, eyes rounding out and barely remembering to keep his voice down. "What are you-?"

"Call me James, please," the young man interrupted smoothly, this time clearly giving permission for the familiar title, "The man your friend beat up usually goes by 'Jim' or 'Kirk' or 'That Bastard,' so you won't mix us up by calling me James."

While Q was trying to puzzle out the strange intimacy about being given someone's preferred name not once but possibly twice, James extended a hand. On reflex, Q withdrew a bit, making sure his own vulnerable, bare hands were out of reach within the room. Thankfully, James didn't seem to notice.

On Bond's - James' - open palm was a dermal regenerator.

Q narrowed his eyes. "Where did you get that?" he asked slowly.

James just smiled as benignly as cloud and said without looking away or blinking, "Stole it from Medical."

"James-!" Q failed to maintain his Vulcan mask, but at the same time he heard Spock get up behind him.

"Who is that, Q?"

Realizing that if Spock got to the door, a second fight might be inevitable - because James was just one remove away from Jim - Q quickly collected himself, snuck an arm out, and _carefully_ plucked the regenerator from Bond's hand. He'd worry about it being contraband later. "Thank you," he said in a rush, then slipped back inside and let the door slide shut.

Now to answer Spock's question.

"It was just a friend of mine," Q said with a straight a face as possible, and despite his mixed feelings about his mixed heritage, he was just the teensiest bit grateful that he was a better liar than Spock was, even as he proceeded to use the regenerator on Spock's bloody lip.

~^~

Things went back to normal. Mostly. Spock went back to being level-headed and sensible - only now it was Q calmly reminding Spock to leave "the illogical human" alone. Kirk continued to be infuriating even when he'd done nothing at all - but it was becoming increasingly clear that he was indeed not an idiot. Spock liked to maintain that at least Bond remained in the 'mentally lackluster' category, and while Q didn't correct his companion, he actually suspected that James was pretty smart, too. Just... maybe in different ways. He'd stolen the dermal regenerator after all. And had then returned an hour later to pick it up again, somehow managing to time his arrival so that Spock was asleep. Q never found out how James both stole and then returned the device, all without getting into any trouble that Q could see.

That was the other thing that hadn't quite gone back to normal: James kept treating Q like they'd been friends since childhood.

It was fucking weird.

Kirk and Spock could be staring phaser beams at one another across the mess hall and yet James, by Kirk's side and not blind enough to miss the animosity, would give an easy smile and a wave in Q's direction. Thankfully, _Spock_ was a bit too blind to notice that - or else he was too fixated on Bond's friend. In all frankness, Q thought that Bond barely existed in Spock's eyes, which was perhaps for the best. _Other_ people seemed to notice, and Q wasn't sure that he liked the jealous looks he kept getting from random people now, mostly female. Still, when he logically observed his interactions with the human James Bond, he found nothing he disliked. Sometimes if Spock and Kirk got close enough to each other to start throwing insults, James would even strike up a conversation with Q to pass the time while they waited to see if a fight would break out - usually about phaser-modifications or the fastest ships in the fleet.

The fight itself was soon forgotten, and it seemed like there would be no real consequences - James had even managed to patch Kirk up enough that the fellow was only slightly black and blue the next day. Unfortunately, everything had consequences, and Q was the one to learn that a week later.

Spock was in a meeting with one of his teachers (and with Kirk, apparently, because the meeting revolved around the fact that Spock and Kirk competed so ferociously that they intimidated the other students), so Q was left to his own devices in their quarters. He was done for the day, and had therefore stripped his gloves and jacket off, because they got stuffy. He didn't know how Spock could handle it, especially since Spock had a more typical Vulcan body-temp, so by all right he should have been dying of heat-stroke, in Q's opinion. Flopped back on the daybed, Q was flipping through the schematics of a ship Bond had mentioned when the door chimed. Surprised because he wasn't expecting anyone, Q automatically put his pad down and trotted barefoot to the door. When he answered it, two young men and a woman were on the other side, none of them familiar, but dressed in school uniforms like everyone else. "Hello?"

"You're the roommate of that other Vulcan, right?" the young woman asked.

Q didn't like the emotional sense he was getting from her, but he'd been taught that reaching out and picking up emotions without permission was rude, so he pulled it back, muffling the feeling. "May I inquire as to why you're asking?" he replied back with care.

One of the male students in the background chuckled. "Yeah, he's with the Vulcan all right. They sound the same."

Q had about half a second to try and figure out what in the world they meant by that before suddenly there was a hand coming at him. It caught him by the collar of his sleeveless undershirt and dragged him forward, out into the hall.

"Your friend's going to learn that you don't mess with one human without messing with all of us!" snarled the woman who'd grabbed Q's shirt. It took Q a moment to grasp what she was talking about, and he was so startled that he almost missed the fist coming at him. Thankfully, while Q hadn't inherited as much Vulcan strength as Spock had, his Betazoid side had given him a sort of slim quickness that allowed him to just barely slide out of the way. When he diverted his attention to try and detach the hand on his shirt, however, he realized that the woman had her sleeves rolled up - with a jolt of growing horror, Q realized that he couldn't touch her because his gloves were still in the room. That realization was like a shot of freon straight into his veins, and he froze up enough that the next punch hit home. It was a truly sloppy punch, glancing off his jaw, but the real problem was that it was skin-on-skin.

Q's telepathy flared and sucked in the data like ink flooding a glass of water.

Vulcans were touch-telepaths, but they had incredible control, even when young. They needed skin-on-skin contact to read minds, but casual contact didn't automatically mean a mindmeld. Betazoids, on the other hand, could read minds even from a distance, and in that way, it was possible to say that they were more powerful. Q had all of that Betazoid power tethered to touch-telepathy, and no one had quite figured out how to train him yet, unique as he was.

Even that brief contact was enough to make Q gag, tasting someone else's righteous anger and adrenaline-pumped glee. The taste of savagery was like pure copper at the back of his tongue - and then it got worse. Someone else grabbed his bare upper arm. The telepathy ratcheted up a notch and Q cried out in shock.

He could see himself, distorted, badly angled; he was looking at himself from a different height and through eyes that saw green one shade brighter than he did, and who thought Q's thick fall of dark hair made him look ridiculous and like a child.

Another punch, a flash of thoughts; anger, blistering; ' _...Cut those pointy ears right off._..'

Q screamed and crumpled, but now another hand had his other arm, a third mind flooding his and threatening to swamp his thoughts. He squeezed his eyes closed but that didn't stop the images, as he was hit by flashes of thoughts and memories and visual data encoded quickly onto the surface of angry minds. In seconds, Q could barely remember where he was or what was even happening; his own name became hard to grasp in just a few seconds more, his mind bombarded by outside personalities that he couldn't block out, and he didn't want to claw at the hands gripping him because that would only make it worse. His hands were the most sensitive part of him, each nerve-ending like a gateway, and in one instant of stupidity he grabbed at one of his attacker's arms... The world inside his head shuddered, and it was like being inside ship as gravity crushed it. Q would have shrieked, but a hand came down over his mouth, making him reel back as a whole new flavor of desperate, vengeful hatred swarmed into him. He was becoming a thing without defined edges, like a scream...

Suddenly it all broke away. He felt his physical body being jarred, and maybe he hit the floor. He'd been so inundated with telepathic data that he couldn't shake it off immediately, although some small, surviving part of his psyche noted that people had stopped touching him. Defense mechanisms learned in childhood immediately kicked into play, and Q curled himself into a ball, tucking his hands under his armpits where no could could touch them, drawing his clothed legs up close. His brain felt bruised, and like it hand slimy handprints all over it, and Q started retching without any more warning than that.

He floated for awhile, feeling horrible, the edges of his mind trying to form a coherent shape again. He was aware of shouting, and maybe he recognized the voice...? But since Q barely recognized _himself_ , he wasn't sure, and that lack of surety scared him.

"Q."

That was him, right?

"Q, can you get up?"

No, no... How was he supposed to move when he was still trying to figure out which thoughts were his and which belong to _them_...?

"All right, all right. It's okay. I'll help you-"

Q sensed a hand coming near him in the same way one could feel a burning brand drawing closer. He let loose a whimpering, desperate cry and flinched away, finally opening his eyes - but he still couldn't see anything, because for some reason his vision was all watery, and his face felt sticky and wet. Was he crying?  But he thought he saw broad shoulders, blond hair, blue eyes. Worried that this was one of the people from earlier, Q wriggled backwards as much as he could without removing his hands from their safe positions, begging, "P-Please... don't touch me anymore. I c-c-can't...! _Don't_."

"Shh, easy. I won't touch you, okay?" the other person gave in easily. There was movement, and after blinking a few times, Q cleared his vision enough to see that a jacket had been removed. He watched with puzzled, numb relief as it was laid over him, effectively covering most of his bare, vulnerable skin. When he looked up from the gift, he finally recognized James Bond of all people, squatting in front of him and looking very concerned. The next thing Q noticed was that there was blood on the knuckles of his right hand, and no one else was there anymore. "Do you want me to call a doctor?"

Mind fuzzy and emotions a wreck, Q acted on instinct, and gave his head a hard, mute shake. James, strangely enough, accepted that without question. "Okay. Do you want to go back to your room?"

His gloves were in there, and a turtleneck sweater. Safety. Q nodded rapidly, tears spilling out of his eyes again.

"All right." James puffed out a sigh, considering things. Despite the fact that Spock thought James was stupid, though, the human came to a conclusion fairly quickly, understanding lighting in his grim blue eyes. "If I keep the jacket around you... and don't touch you skin... will you be all right with me carrying you?" he asked slowly.

Still hurting inside and out, Q was wary of this proposition, and for a moment he cowered back against the hallway floor, the wall a solid, cold shape at his back. He pulled the jacket - James' jacket - closer, as if hiding beneath it. He didn't want to be accidentally touched, but he also didn't want to be found by more strangers in the hallway, and he didn't feel stable enough to move on his own without his brain sloshing around in his skull...

"O-Okay," he rasped after a few long moments. His terror showed clearly in his eyes as he looked up, hoping that James wouldn't hurt him further.

By the soft set of Bond's eyes, he at least wouldn't hurt Q intentionally. With that in mind, easing Q's racing heart a bit, the young half-Vulcan lay obediently still, not wriggling even as he felt strong but careful arms slid under and around him. James managed to keep the jacket in place, except to adjust it a few times to cover Q better. In the end, Q's upper half probably looked like it had been wrapped in a straight-jacket, but he felt immeasurably _safe_ that way by the time he was hoisted up in Bond's arms.

Thankfully, the door was proximity sensitive, and recognized Q even if Q was still only barely recognizing the shape of his own thoughts amidst the mess of his mind. It was like three party animals had gotten in there and trashed the place; he'd be picking up broken things for hours after this. Q closed his eyes, exhausted already, and was thankful for his overlong hair (definitely _not_ a Vulcan style) as it allowed him to lean his head against Bond's neck a little without skin touching skin. Bond made a little noise of surprise, but didn't stop walking, soon bringing them into Spock and Q's shared quarters.

"Where do you want to go?" James' voice rumbled through him, soft and reassuringly steady. Q wanted some of that calmness so badly that he reached out without thinking, grabbing wildly with his telepathy - because being half Betazoid meant that touch wasn't the only way Q's powers worked. James immediately hissed in a breath, his grip on Q unconsciously tightening. "Shit, you really are a telepath. Why didn't you use this on those arseholes who attacked you?"

Q immediately pulled his telepathy back in, leaning away as far as he could without falling right out of James's grip. Horrified at what he'd just done, he stared at James, who didn't actually seem all that upset despite having _felt_ telepathic tendrils in his head. Q had gotten just enough of what he was looking for, though - surface-layer emotions of calmness - that he was able to articulate in a rush, "I'msosorry - Ineverdothat."

Surprisingly, Bond smiled - a slightly shadowed, crooked smile. "Next time - do it," he advised mercilessly.

Q had never been faced with someone who was so blasé about a telepathic invasion (however brief), and he was still trying to figure James out by the time the human made the decision to take them to the bathroom. "I'm starting to wish I hadn't returned that dermal regenerator," James said, as he set Q carefully down on the counter. That put him right next to the mirror, so Q was able to corroborate Bond's story as the young human finished, "Because you took a few hard knocks before I got there."

"How did you know to come?" Q asked distractedly, lifting a hand to prod at his cheekbone, where the skin was scraped and already swelling.

"I was in the area."

Q met James' eyes in the mirror. Raised one eyebrow.

With a shrug, James elaborated, "I know that Spock hates me on principle, or whatever it is you Vulcans call it when you want to punch someone, so I figured I'd swing by when I knew he was out. I guess _they_ had the same idea."

"They were actually looking for Spock," Q said, voice getting small as he recalled the event. Images rushed to him, thoughts and feelings that weren't his, and he bared his teeth in a hiss of psychic pain. "They were avenging Kirk," he said, and it took an effort to remove emotions from his voice, to be Vulcan, "If Spock had been here, they'd have torn him apart."

"Fuck," James swore, but at the same time Q swayed dangerously, and it was only thanks to Bond's hands that the young half-Vulcan didn't fall right off the countertop. "Shit, you're sure you don't want to go to Medical?" James gasped, managing to support Q without touching any skin.

"I'm sure," Q shot back immediately, perhaps a tad too fast, giving away his desperation - and the fact that he was still very emotive right now, even if the emotions were echoes of other people's feelings, and not necessarily his own. Seeing that James was patiently waiting for more of an explanation, Q sighed and sagged against the mirror. "I intend to press charges, and to seek medical attention, but right now..." He squeezed his eyes shut. "Too many people," he whispered out the last bit, feeling fragile and weak.

"Ah," James said, a wealth of wincing sympathy in that one sound. He moved back to sit on the lowered toilet seat.

Q reached out to find a hand-towel, wetting it as he had for Spock, hoping that he could dab away some blood without getting dizzy. "You might want to leave, too."

James's eyes grew opaque, his tone recalcitrant, all in an instant. "Oh really?"

This was painful to admit, but it sounded like James wouldn't leave him on his own otherwise. "I'm... unstable. Raw. I don't mind your presence so long as you don't touch me, but my control..."

Thankfully, before Q had to press onwards, understanding lit James' eyes, much like it had earlier. He was really quite intuitive, even by high Vulcan standards. "What you did earlier wasn't a fluke, was it? When I felt you in my head?"

Miserably, Q nodded, and found that it was hard to dab at his bloody face with his hands shaking this badly.

James was silent, but he hadn't left, and his face looked merely thoughtful - not scared or angry. When he spoke up a few moments later, his question wasn't what Q had expected: "How deep do you read?"

Q blinked. "Uh..." he stumbled, brain still sluggish, but an answer fell out somehow, "Accidentally, like this? Just surface level. Emotions and really strong, current thoughts."

"That's fine then," James said equably, and just like that he was standing up and taking charge again, "If I find those gloves you're always wearing, and put them on myself, will you let me clean up your face? Sorry to say, but you're not doing an awfully good job of it."

Q wanted to be mad, but anger was not very Vulcan, and besides - the half-smile on James' face softened his last sentence. Feeling tired and still a bit scared, Q also found that he wanted nothing more than to just sit here, leaning against the corner, and let someone take care of him. So he nodded, closing his eyes. "They should be on my bed. Turn left and you'll find it. If you can get your hands into them, I'll let you play nurse."

Bond's chuckle came from where he was already following directions, voice drifting lazily back, "The last time someone talked about 'playing nurse,' I was the one asking, and it was under very different circumstances."

Q's telepathy licked out, reacting to his reflexive curiosity and present lack of control - but all it picked up was a pleasant sort of warmth, a playful fondness, and maybe beneath it all a rolling sort of heat that made Q's body feel warm. He heard by Bond's grunt that the human had perhaps noticed the intrusion, but beyond that, he still didn't complain.

"How are you so calm about all of this?" Q had to know by the time James came back - with Q's gloves fitted on his hands like... well, they fit him like a glove. They'd probably be quite stretched by the time Q got them back, but it was for a good cause. Q sat where he was and just kept watching Bond's face, stubbornly waiting for an answer even as James approached and took over with the first-aid.

"Maybe," James said, low and quiet, but with emotions that still read as sincere, "I just figured that you needed some calm right about now."

"But I keep getting in your head. And I'm probably going to keep doing it for another hour or so."

"I don't mind."

Q huffed in wary disbelief, but tipped his head to let James inspect a bruise on his jawline. "Really?" he deadpanned.

"I've got nothing to hide," the young man shrugged, then added in a slightly lower, rougher register, even as he tipped Q's head with gentle, gloved fingertips. He was looking at Q's ear, Q realized, and only then was he able to distinguish a dull pain there amidst the rest. He was distracted by the rest of James' answer: "Not where you're looking, anyway. Dig keeper and maybe then I'll get nervous."

Q would have pondered that final phrase more deeply if he were not the one nervous - he was presently worried about his ears, which he could vividly recall his attackers wanting to damage. The psychic echo of their thoughts spread like a cancer, metastasizing, making the thread more vivid all of a sudden.  The ear that pained Q was furthest from the mirror, and Q found himself hyperventilating a little as he tried to twist around and get a good look, his hair getting in the way and his continued lack of coordination not helping. He ended up panicked and nauseous without actually making much progress, and James gripped his shoulders to ease him back into his previous spot. "Easy, Q, easy," the other student said, brows lowered with concern, "What's wrong?"

"M-My ears, they said they'd _dock my ears_ -!" the young half-Vulcan stuttered out, already lifting his hands, but they were shaking and his head was full of foreign thoughts, and he was so afraid of what he'd find that he couldn't bring himself to touch.

James' gloved hands came up alongside his head instead, at first just cupping it and subtly steadying Q's world. Even with the gloves in the way, Q's telepathy still took that as an excuse to make a grab for James' mind, and Q ended up sagging with a sigh as his psyche rubbed up against a calm, soothing sea. Bond wasn't freaking out; not freaking out felt nice.

Meanwhile, Bond's thumbs were gently rubbing his temples, a prelude to Bond's right hand sliding confidently back through Q's hair to nudge his ear. Contact in general wasn't something Q got very often - people touchings his ears was something he couldn't even remember happening, at least not since he was young enough to have his parents washing behind his ears for him. He closed his eyes because while it felt foreign, it also felt relaxing. Good, even.  As James' gloved fingertips stroked along the edge, Q could also tell that they took a straight, smooth path all the way to the tip. Still touching lightly, James murmured gently, "I think someone clocked you upside the head, and that's why you're hurting here. I don't know how well bruises show on Vulcan ears, but you'll probably be finding out soon. But otherwise you're all right."

"Thank you," Q wheezed out, the last of his panic feeling like a vice loosening around his chest. He saw no reason to move away, and apparently James had nothing better to do, because the human just kept cradling his head and touching his ears with light, exploratory fingers. Q would have never thought it would feel so nice to have someone else just cupping his jaw, giving him something to rest his cheek against, while another hand gently mapped his delicately-tapered, Vulcan ears.

~^~

Q was dressed in a black, high-necked pullover and a spare pair of gloves fifteen minutes later, still feeling a little thrilled that he'd let James not only see his bare torso but also check it over, trusting the man not to accidentally initiate any skin-on-skin contact. Q had continued to accidentally reach for Bond's mind the whole time, but besides the occasional, brief twitch of surprise, James continued not to comment on it. Now, having found something for the pain - promising to go to Medical later for something better, once Q's psyche calmed down - Q and James had taken up residence on the daybed. James had declined to leave, and still wore Q's gloves, but had also put on his jacket. That had covered up a lot of dangerous skin, but in a thought very atypical of him, Q rather thought he missed seeing that bare skin. James really had very impressive arms and shoulders, muscular in a way that Q and Spock were not.  Right now, they were looking at those same schematics Q had found earlier, both of them chattering animatedly about warp cores and the rather peculiar idea of streamlining a ship in the vacuum of space.

That was where Spock and Kirk _both_ found them ten minutes later. By the way Spock and Kirk burst in, panting for breath and the last words of what sounded like an argument dying on their breath, they'd perhaps heard rumors of the recent incident. Instead of looking like they wanted to murder one another, it was actually a pleasant change of pace to see that the two nemeses both, instead, looked starkly worried. Q's mind brushed out without meaning to, catching on Kirk's thoughts, which were so close to the surface that Q could actually read them as more than an amorphous cloud of emotions. _'He's terrified that this is his fault_ ,' Q realized, and immediately felt more warmly towards the man than he had before.

Spock was clearly struggling not to show emotion, something that Q would be very careful not to call him on, because that would be impolite. "Q, what happened?" Spock asked after swallowing a few times, angling his head so that he was looking at Q from under his brows. This was what Q thought of as Spock's 'going to war' face, because while it was still calm, it radiated a level of danger that bespoke a declaration of war.

The funny thing was, Kirk asked the same question of James at exactly the same time, causing the two speakers to jerk and stare at each other.

Q couldn't help it: his mouth quirked upwards in a shy smile and he emitted a small giggle. He figured he could be forgiven for such a human response, seeing as his head still had remnants of human emotions in it - and maybe he was picking up on some of that humor from Bond, who had chuckled even louder. Notably, Bond was still as calm as a comet through space, comfortably slouched at Q's side like some sort of big, guarding pet.

Two gloved fingers tapped the back of Q's nearest, gloved hand. Q's telepathy immediately twitched outwards, curious, even as he turned to look at Bond's playfully smiling face. Q was surprised when he was able to read words in James' mind, close enough to the surface that, like with Kirk, they were readable even by accident: ' _I think that we should be asking what happened to_ them _, to bring them both here without killing one another_.'

Q told himself that he would not giggle again, but he thought that his amusement showed in his eyes, because a reciprocal pleasure spread like a warm wave through James' thoughts before Q got his telepathy back under control.

~^~

The next few days would get messy, because while Q wasn't permanently damaged in any way, punishing his attackers meant that said attackers spilled the story of Spock and Kirk fighting. By that point, however, Spock and Kirk were no longer quite so at odds. Strangely enough, in fact, they even provided a united front, and while Spock was pants at lying, Kirk was a pro, and together they managed to act as though they had never fought at all.

"You humans are highly illogical," Q informed James as they watched Spock and Kirk effortlessly pretending to be friends. Too effortlessly, Q thought, but that wasn't a bad thing.

"I think you mean 'insane'," James supplied, from where he leaned against the wall next to Q. James was back to being barehanded again, but he still hadn't gone back to giving Q the same personal space that most people did. He'd leaned in so that they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder.

And Q didn't mind a bit.

~^~

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should also note that a few ideas in this fic came from [this post](https://imgur.com/gallery/qSmHy), which talks about how human insanity keeps them alive, while also driving other species a little bit insane.


	7. "Deer" James...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Q lives on his own in the woods, hacking for a living but taking photos for fun. The story only gets complicated when a remarkable stag, amoral poachers, and a steel trap enter the picture, and shenanigans ensue from there...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: shape-shifting; hurt/comfort; lots of nudity; pre-relationship; Q gets a bit drunk, but it's fair, because he gets a bit traumatized, too; Q is not MI6 in this one, but James is... was; humor; but also feels, because Q is a soft muffin and Bond has scars

In which Q lives alone, hacks remotely for a living, and enjoy photography. When he first sees the magnificent stag in the early morning, it spooks easily. It's an absolute beast of an animal, proud and powerful, but with at least a half-dozen scars across its pelt that say people have tried to 'shoot' it before, but not with a camera. It takes ages for Q to get a photo, convincing the creature that he's not a hunter, simply a very impressed observer.

 

Q had expected the animal to stay for a season, perhaps recovering from a more recent wound that Q noted on its shoulder. Despite the Parks and Wildlife people telling everyone not to feed the wildlife, Q left some feed out, too. Sometimes he sat nearby and waited, trying to get another good camera-shot. Sometimes he left and gave the stag its privacy.

 

But this stag isn't all that it seems, that there's a lot more 'heart' to this 'hart' than Q knows…

 

 

 

~^~

 

Just when Q was reaching the point where he could get half-decent pictures of the stag (it had quickly become his favorite subject, enough to drag him out of bed regularly even on the coolest mornings), the animal got scarce. Q quickly figured that it was spooked by other people, because not long after, Q himself started noticing footprints that weren't his. Bothered by trespassers on his land, Q called the local Game Warden, and was assured that someone would look into it. Figuring that that was that, and hoping the stag would come back once it was just the two of them again, the boffin didn't think much more of it.

 

Two days later, though, as he was walking around in the pre-dawn mist, hoping to snap a shot of a fox he'd seen in the area, Q stepped down and had a split second to register an unexpected click beneath his foot.

 

A split second after that, and the leaf-litter exploded up around his boot, and pain lanced up from around his ankle as if all of the bones had suddenly imploded. The crunch of steel jaws around his shin was so shocking that the entire leg buckled, and Q fell with a cry.

 

Q had always been a careful child; he wasn't a daredevil. Therefore, the most pain he'd ever experienced was when he'd had his tonsils removed and his diet had been limited to painkillers and jello for what felt like eons as he healed. This was pain on a whole different level. On his side in the leaves and wanting to be anywhere but in his own body right now, Q grabbed at the steel-trap but then just as quickly let go, the pain doubling with the movement. He was only distantly aware that he screamed again, the pain too much to bottle up silently. For awhile, Q was barely aware of anything but the shock and the pain - not the dampness of the ground sinking into him, not the leaf-litter crunching as he writhed to escape the pain, not the way his toque fell off and his head got cold.

 

At some point, Q's logical side managed to surface again. Everything was quiet, the usual sounds of nature still dampened in the wake of the screaming human in their midst. Q could hear himself panting, could smell moss and rotting earth by his nose, feel a fallen leave like a wet strip against his face. Dragging in a shaky breath and trying to push down the panic, Q rasped at himself, "You're... You're okay, Q. You're okay. This... This is fixable." He kept hoping that his words would actually come true as he gingerly sat up, trying to logically assess the situation.

 

It didn't look good. Q had no experience with life-traps, and the jaws had made a bloody mess of his ankle that made Q sick to his stomach just looking at. "Shit," he breathed, shaking.

 

Q could feel himself starting to panic all over again, overwhelmed, when he heard leaves crunching, and voices. It took him a second, pain fogging his brain, before he collected himself enough to call out, "Hey! Hey, whoever you are - _help_!" He shouted it again for good measure, although his voice cracked almost immediately - his screaming had been enough to make his throat raw, before he'd fallen silent. It was foggy out, but he could see three human figures who froze the second he called.

 

Then Q's heart fell, because instead of someone shouting back, asking what was going on and coming forward to help, he heard a loud hiss, "Fuck, that's not a fox. Robby, you damn idiot, we got a person!"

 

Realizing that these were the people who'd been trespassing on his land - who not only had NOT been removed, but who were actually poachers - Q's horror grew. He shouted more loudly for them to bloody let him go, but they weren't listening. They squabbled about what to do, about how they could get in so much trouble for this, and how they couldn't afford to go to jail for catching a person in leg-trap like this.

 

By the time they decided to just quietly leave - it was too foggy for their unwanted catch to have seen their faces - Q had all but screamed himself hoarse.

 

His last, thin, reedy shout was to tell them that he was the only person within miles - he'd die out here. No one would find him.

 

Apparently that was just perfect for the poachers, because their silhouettes faded away, the crunch of their boots fading into the distance to leave Q very, very alone.

 

_Now_ Q panicked. It started with him falling silent, his throat too raw to make much more noise anyway; then it quickly turned into shaking, his body subsiding back into the chilly leaves. Q was aware of the shaking escalating into hyperventilating, and he tried to stave it off with action. He could get himself out of this. He could do it. He could. He was alone, yes... terribly alone... but that didn't mean he was going to die here, to be eaten by many of the same creatures he photographed everyday...

 

Q's vision was tunneling and making it impossible to focus on and figure out the trap's mechanism. When he tried to blindly pry open the trap's jaws, his fingers slipped on his own blood, and it made him want to vomit. Q had patched up his own little scratches and scrapes over the years, living alone, and hadn't thought that he had any aversion to blood - until now. Making it worse, he didn't think that he could feel his foot, and that couldn't be good. But his fingertips were also tingly and numb, and from past experience, he knew to blame that on a panic attack... "Shit!" he snarled with more emphasis than before, falling back and pressing his fingers up under his glasses, pushing them against his eyes and try and center himself. "Shit, shit, shi-!!"

 

Q cut off his mantra with a wild yelp as he felt hot, damp air puff against the backs of his hands.

 

Dropping his hands away and blinking to clear his vision after pressing against his eyeballs so hard, it took a second for Q to register that there was something hanging over him. Something _big_. Even after the boffin's vision cleared, it took almost another minute to accept what he was seeing: branching antlers, damp rounded nose, wide dark eyes, all attached to a long-legged but powerful body. It was the stag.

 

"I thought you'd left," Q found himself saying, breathless and stupid with shock. He didn't consider the ridiculousness of talking to a deer. As if it understood, however, the stag huffed, the breath rushing warmly across Q's face before the animal lifted its head again. It shifted its body as it looked around, wary and clearly checking for predators - or people. Considering that Q was also a 'people,' he didn't know why the animal was so close to him. In fact, as the stag shifted its stance, Q tensed in preparation to be stepped on - but instead, one cloven hoof stepped over him until the stag was more or less standing over Q.

 

Q still hurt like hell but somehow that was comforting. "Thanks," he found himself saying softly. Ears and then eyes swiveled down to him. Another exhale that clouded the morning air.

 

Q wasn't sure how to react as the stag turned its austere attention from him to the leg-trap, so he merely stayed still. It briefly occurred to him, as the stag turned - again careful not to step on him - and leaned in close to the injury, to shoo the animal away. The thought fled as soon as it started, however, because Q simply didn't have the energy. "It's not like you could make this any worse," he found himself adding out loud, slightly hopeful that he was right. One big ear flickered back to him, but the antlered head remained stretched close to the trap, seeming to inspect it. It was remarkably attentive and interested for a common herd-animal.

 

And remarkably tame, after all the trouble Q had had just getting within camera-range of it up until now. This close, Q could clearly see the patches and lines of white fur grown in over white scars - more of them by far than he'd noticed before. Propping up on his elbows now, and perhaps a bit out of his head with pain, Q found himself frowning and saying sadly, "What in the world happened to you?" and then, because his mouth just kept moving, "I'm sorry."

 

Now Q had both an ear and one liquid-dark eye turned to him, and neither of them moved for a long moment. Then the animal exhaled, a deeper, somehow more tired breath than before. It stepped away from Q, but only so that it could apparently follow the chain to where it had been staked into the ground. The stag started pawing determinedly, muscular shoulders bunching as its hooves dug up clots of dirt.

 

Having a deer - a _deer_ \- trying to help him get loose somehow managed to kickstart Q's brain again, or at least it got him to sit up and try prying the steel jaws apart again. More determined now (and just hazy enough not to think too hard on why a stag was doing any of this), Q gritted his teeth against the imminent pain and tried to get a good grip on either side of the trap. The blood was sticky and sickening, but he closed his eyes and tried to ignore it as he pushed and pulled. He was either weaker than he thought or _getting_ weaker, though, because all of his attempts only managed to open the jaws scant millimeters - and then they'd grind shut again. By the time Q had to give up and take a break, tears had streaked hot paths down his face, and he knew that his breathing sounded precariously close to sobs. He'd have tired to hide it more, but the only witness was a deer.

 

Said deer was watching him, when Q gave up and fell back again to recover. Apparently digging also wasn't yielding the best results.

 

Curling on his side - the angle that caused the least torsion in his ankle and thus the least pain - Q buried his face in his hands, not caring that he was probably getting blood, dirt, and sweat on his glasses. "I don't want to die here," he said very quietly into his palms.

 

He heard a huff from the deer. It had a bit more volume behind it, and a thud like a stamped hoof.

 

Q just kept talking, curling his torso inwards, "I live alone. I've never been good with people, so I don't even have anyone who checks on me. I left my bloody phone at home because the stupid thing needed charging." Q let out a little growl of self-hatred, realizing that he should never have done that. "Dammit," he hissed to himself, wanting to stay angry but quickly finding the helplessness driving more tears down his nose and cheeks.

 

The ground crunched softly. Everything else about the morning was so quiet that it was possible to hear even the quiet steps of a deer - especially one this big, and one this close. Q numbly listened to it, but didn't really come out of his own pity-party until there was a furry _thump_ next to him, and warmth touching his head. Once again jerking his hands down and looking up, he could only stare in shock, seeing that the stag who had previously been so aloof was now lying down right up against him. It wasn't looking at him, instead focused rather purposefully away, but the fact remained that Q was now close enough that if he didn't keep his arms tucked close, his hands would be brushing against its creamy-tan belly. A knee had nudged the back of Q's head, and he thought he felt a hoof against his back where the creatures leg folded around behind.

 

Unsure what to do, and probably in shock now in multiple ways, Q found his mouth moving again: "I have no idea what's going on."

 

The stag's chest vibrated, making a sound at a pitch Q couldn't hear, but at this distance, could _feel_. The animal get its magnificent antlers a shake.

 

"I... I..." Q kept shakily going, because talking to a deer was no longer the weirdest thing going on in this scenario, "I think that I might have lost more blood than I thought, from just my leg, and now I'm hallucinating."

 

In response, the stag tossed its head again, then shifted its body closer. Q couldn't deny that this was a very _real_ hallucination, because he could certainly feel it when the stag, twisting around, nudged his hand.

 

What followed was fuzzy in Q's memory. It was so surreal that he was pretty sure he just stopped processing it, right around the time the stag nuzzled his shoulder, or perhaps when the great animal kept shifting them closer and closer together. At the point where Q found himself curled right up against the deer's flank, he either fully succumbed to shock and passed out, or else he just fainted from the pure insanity of it all. There was a third option: as the stag's body-heat sank into him, the relief was enough that his mind saw it as a safe place to retreat to. one way or another, Q's consciousness sank away, somewhere where the pain couldn't easily find it. Q's cold fingers buried themselves in dense tan fur.

 

~^~

 

The stag watched him intently, head angled back alertly, and as Q's eyes fluttered and stayed closed, the animal snorted. When that garnered no response resides a small whimper, the animal heaved a sigh as if to say, _'Finally_!'

 

It's antlers suddenly began to smoke at the tips, a stray breeze taking away the tips of them like ash giving way. Its fur rippled like disturbed water.

 

Pebble-black eyes burned a bright blue…

 

A blond-haired, blue-eyed man sat where a stag had been a moment before, Q's head in his lap. His clothing was rough to say the least, and the blue-eyed man took a moment to drag a hand back through his hair - it was unwashed enough that it stood up in spikes atop his head, and he frowned at the texture before looking back down at the unresponsive boffin draped across his legs. "Sorry I had to wait for you to pass out," the blond-haired man rasped quietly. The rumble of his words still sounded faintly like it could have come from the stag's chest, but his hands were human and careful as he eased Q down to the ground again. Turning now to Q's leg, the older man whistled softly past his teeth, talking to himself, "You'd better hope that he's worth it, James." Without further stalling, he gripped the trap - he was stronger than Q, but besides that, he also knew a thing or two about leg-traps from his younger days. The days before the Navy. Before war. Before spying. Before MI6. Before the hell of it all became too much for him.

 

Q let out a piercing sound as the traps jaws released his ankle, but James stayed focused, ensuring that the trap was disarmed before turning back. Q was a bit more aware, but his eyes were still closed, and he was swearing under his breath.

 

In for a pence, in for a pound, James figured, and set the bloodied metal aside to instead tear a strip off his shirt - easily done, as it was in rags. Much like his pelt as a stag, it had seen rough times. Binding Q's ankle up with speed but with care, James was soon able to turn and scoop the semi-conscious boffin up in his arms. It felt strange to be on two legs again, but he managed, cradling the other man in his arms.

 

~^~

 

Q groaned, feeling his brain come online and his body with it - both felt rusty, and the latter send a throb of pain all the way up to his knee it felt like.

 

"You probably need painkillers."

 

The low voice startled Q the rest of the way to full wakefulness, and he snapped his eyes open with a jerk of his head. He turned and focused, finding that he was back in his house, on the couch, and staring at a rough-looking stranger presently sitting on the hearth to the fire place. A low fire was crackling, and Q noticed for the first time that he'd been very, very chill - but was now cozily warm. A blanket that usually resided on the back of the couch had been draped over him. Deciding that the stranger in his house was actually the second-largest worry on his mind, Q sat up - a bit too quickly, head spinning - and dragged the blanket up away from his legs. He was san's shoes and socks now, but where he expected to see a mass of ragged flesh, his ankle had been neatly bandaged.

 

He heard a rattling noise, and looked over to see that the man had a bottle of Paracetamol that he was shaking in one hand. Seeming to follow or preempt Q's thoughts, the next thing he said was, "The first-aid kit took a bit of finding. You'll probably want to see a doctor, but you won't get gangrene in the meanwhile." Eyes a shocking shade of blue flicked to Q's ankle before settling calmly on Q's face again.

 

What followed was awkward silence. Q was just staring and blinking, feeling very vulnerable because he was pretty sure that he wasn't about to run anywhere on his ankle, no matter how well-bandaged. Beneath that, though, his brain was waking up more and more by the second, and even a foggy eidetic memory was still a force to be reckoned with. As he recalled more and more, he pursed his lips hard, watching as the other man shifted uneasily. The fellow looked homeless, his clothing a wreck, and torn enough that Q could see the fresh scar on one shoulder, still raw as it healed.

 

"This makes no sense," was all Q said.

 

Blue eyes met his unflinchingly, and the voice remained almost annoyingly steady, "Well, I'm not sure how you got yourself into this mess, but by the time I found you, you were unconscious, so-"

 

"No," Q interrupted him. His brain was rebelling against what he knew, but the throb of pain from his ankle kept him grounded. "I mean... Yes, you found." The man nodded. Beneath all of the scruff on his jaw and his unkempt appearance, he was probably handsome. Q, though, knew that he was capable of being utterly magnificent, even if - as he'd said - it made no sense. "The rest of what you just said is a lie, though," he finished.

 

The expression across from him grew stiff, the posture tense. "I don't know what you're talking about."

 

"You found me before I passed out. And you..." Q had to roll the words around inside of his mouth like a bitter pill that didn't want to go down. He watched the other man grow uncomfortable waiting. Finally, Q just spat it out, "...You had antlers then."

 

"That's ridiculous."

 

"No argument here. But I've got a photographic memory, and even though my head's a bit foggy still, I know I don't have a brain injury."

 

For a second they just stared at each other, Q imagining that he wore an expression that said he was resigned to the insanity of it all, the other man looked frustrated. Finally, the blue-eyed not-quite-stranger looked away again. "Fuck."

 

When those blue eyes turned back to Q again, they were hovering between defeated and hopeful still. "Your memory really is picture-perfect?"

 

"Very."

 

"And you...?"

 

"Remember you somehow starting out as a deer and then suddenly becoming human? Yes, I seem to. More by the minute, actually."

 

"Fuck," the man - or whatever he was - repeated, sullen now.

 

Q, for his part, sagged back against the arm of the couch and just stared at the ceiling. More and more images were coming back to him, and sensations: the feeling of fur fading away beneath his touch like a charred log collapsing into soft ash. "Forget the painkillers, I need a drink," Q groaned, taking off his glasses to give his eyes a good and proper rub.

 

The sigh he heard from his companion was full of relief. "I couldn't agree more. I hope you have something?"

 

"The cabinet above the stove. I put it there so that it's slightly hard to reach, which discourages me from getting at it unless I really want it." Eyes still covered, he thought he heard a chuff of amusement - it sounded eerily like the stag's huff of breath. "Glasses are one cupboard to the left." When Q put his glasses back on again, it was to see his strange rescuer/guest returning with two tumblers of amber liquid, and Q took one gratefully. It was strange, but he actually felt more at ease now that he knew this man had been a stag at one point. It was weird as hell, but at least that meant there wasn't a stranger in his house, not really. It made him bold enough to say, after one burning gulp of what turned out to be whiskey, "If you tell me your name, I'll let you use my shower."

 

That tricked a fuller, more human-sounding laugh out of the man, who was still standing next to him. "You're not going to demand how it's possible that a man transform back and forth into an antlered quadruped?" he said with a mixture of surprise and humor.

 

Q shook his head. "I'm not nearly drunk enough for that yet." He took another mouthful, enjoying the internal warmth it spread, like a mellow fire.

 

After making a soft, incredulous noise and taking a sip of his own - a slow sip, appreciative, like a man who hadn't had it in awhile - the blue-eyed man spoke again, softly, "James. You can call me James." Another sip, taken by both of them in tandem, the alcohol needed to smooth over the rough edges of this conversation. After swallowing, James looked down at himself and grimaced, adding, "And I am rather in need of a wash, aren't I?"

 

Q wrinkled his nose, but had it in him to joke, "On account of you having saved my life, I was going to be polite and not mention that. But a bit of soap probably wouldn't go amiss."

 

"Cheeky pup," he thought he heard James mutter in the wake of a chuckle, but then James was knocking back the last of his drink and setting the tumbler down. "Fine then. Point me in the right direction, and I'll see if I can remember how showers work."

 

It was hard to tell whether James was joking about that last part or not. A bit worried that it was said candidly, Q merely pointed to a hallway leading out of the open-space living room and kitchen. "First door on the right."

 

James hesitated a moment, looking like he wanted to say more - then glancing at Q as if he wanted to _know_ more - before simply giving his head a military-esque sort of nod and walking off. Q waited until he heard a distant door shut. Then water running. Only then did he also down his entire drink. He hoped that James took a long shower, not because the man was dirty, but because Q needed the time to decide whether this was all real or not.

 

~^~

 

God, it felt good to be clean. James stayed in the shower until all the hot water ran out and even a bit after, his body accustomed to frigid streams (and his manners not yet re-awakened enough to consider whether or not he was being rude by using up all of Q's hot water). Coming out of the water, he realized that he'd undue all of his cleanliness if he put his ragged clothes back on, so he settled for a fluffy purple towel around his hips. He briefly eyed the shaving paraphernalia on the counter, feeling his scruffy jaw, but decided that it was enough just to be clean.

 

Bracing himself for the conversation that was no doubt to come, James cinched the towel a bit more securely, then walked out. "Q, I hope you don't mind, but I commandeered your towel," he said awkwardly. He cursed his slow tongue, remembering when it had been one of the cleverest parts on him. Not talking for months had taken its toll. "I might have also used up all your hot water."

 

Instead of berating James, Q sat up on the couch - eyebrows jumping up at the sight of his guest - and chose to reply with a question, "How do you know my name?"

 

"You talk to yourself a lot," James admitted, still feeling uncomfortable. He remembered when he used to feel at home in his skin, no matter where he was, who he was with, or who he was pretending to be. As a spy, he'd thought he'd lost the ability to be uncomfortable. Apparently, though, wearing his animal skin for so long has undone a lot of that training. His body felt very bare without fur. James decided that so long as questions were allowed, he could ask one of his own, so long as he kept it idle, "If you have a photographic memory, why do you take to many damned photos?"

 

Q flushed, leaning against the back of the couch. It was a remarkably cute look, as he watched his own dexterous fingers playing at the material. "It's just a hobby." Getting a bit more fiery, he looked up and defended, "If I didn't do photography, I'd never get outside, and I'd go from a hermit to a creepy shut-in." Now it was apparently Q's opportunity to ask a question, and he paused for a long while. James thought he knew what the question would be - _the_ question, the one about James being a deer part of his life - but instead, Q looked up shyly but with a small smile, "Do you want to see some pictures of yourself?"

 

~^~

 

And thus began the struggle of finding Q's photos. Q first freaked out about what had happened to his camera, finally realizing that it had been with him when he'd stepped into the trap today. Only after freaking out and falling off the couch did Q hear James hurriedly assure him that the camera was fine - it was by the door. Of course, then a very embarrassed Q needed help getting up again, because his leg really wasn't dependable, and when James crouched down to help him, he nearly lost his towel. Having spent so long in a body that didn't really worry about clothing, it took James a disoriented half-beat to remember his manners and his modesty. It was all quite a bit of a mess. Q was pink-chewked enough to indicate that he'd seen something, and James was struggling to recall whether that was rude or not, and when Q said that he'd have to dig through his desk for his favorite photos, he realized that that would include walking, which he couldn't do.

 

Ultimately, Q ended up standing, but with James under one shoulder.

 

"This is very awkward," Q observed as they stood there, both of them sort of waiting to see if James' towel would come undone again. James had one arm around Q's waist and the other around Q's wrist, and he seemed disinterested in letting go - even to catch a falling towel.

 

"To be honest, I keep forgetting that nudity bothers people," James grumbled, staring in offended consternation at the towel as he kept admitting, "Even before spending the last few months as a stag, my line of work didn't exactly allow for shyness."

 

Q, in all of his wisdom, asked with honest interest, "Were you a porn star?"

 

James lifted his head, and for a second they just stared at one another, Q guilelessly waiting for an answer and James staring at him in disbelief. Finally, slowly, James corrected him, "No, I actually worked for the government."

 

Both eyebrows rose up into Q's hair. "One of my brothers works for the government, and I'm pretty sure that he's still so sensitive to nudity that he'll never get laid. You must be in a different department."

 

"How about we just go find those photos of yours?" James suggested, dodging the question, although he had to bite his tongue hard to keep from explaining himself more. It had been a long time since he'd been comfortable around someone like he was comfortable around Q now; in truth, he'd thought he'd never really trust people again. But then this twig of a man had started following him around with a camera... and feeding him... and respecting his space... and talking to him...

 

Halfway to helping Q across the room, James murmured almost too quietly to hear, "I was a spy."

 

Q's hopping came to a stop and he turned. Because he was already leaning on James for support, this small movement put them very close, Q pressed against half of James' bare chest but seeming not to notice as he searched James' expression. He didn't look quite as shocked as James had expected, and he said so.

 

Wetting his lips, still studying James as if some answers were hidden in the lines of his face, Q replied carefully, "To be honest, hearing that you're a British spy - I assume British?" James nodded. "-Is by far the most normal thing you've told me about yourself. I'm also a bit of a lightweight, and I just realized that I drank all of that whiskey on an empty stomach, so the existential crisis will come after the buzz wears off."

 

Relieved beyond words, James was unable to help the smile that cut across his face. He chuckled, wondering why it had taken him so long as a stag to warm up to this strange and charming young fellow. "Well, if it helps, I think I might be retired."

 

"You _'think'_?"

 

"I'm pretty sure that I was declared dead. That's pretty much the only way to retire from MI6."

 

Q softly repeated 'MI6' to himself, but otherwise swallowed the information - although his face got terribly sad. James looked away, his pride resistant to anything that resembled pity, but he couldn't ignore the way Q's fingertips (his arm wrapped around behind James' back for support) pressed against his side. It was almost like a little hug, and James's abdominals tightened at the unexpected loveliness of such a small gesture.

 

"My photos are just in the study here," Q said quietly, and they continued their walking-hoping-tottering journey to Q's desk and his pictures.

 

~^~

 

Q's ankle still hurt, but he'd had just enough alcohol to take the edge off, and James was very distracting. Hell, even if the man weren't some sort of shapeshifter and spouting stories about lethal retirements and MI6, the man was exactly Q's type, and had an aversion to modesty that was making Q acutely aware of how long it had been since he'd been laid. God, things were complicated enough without adding his libido to the mix... ' _Q_ ,' Q told himself sternly, as he sat in his chair and showed James his latest photos, recently printed despite Q's love of technology, ' _Do n_ ot _ask the pretty deer-man to fuck you._ ' Q's cock didn't seem to be listening, so the boffin just handed over the photos and folded his hands subtly over his lap.

 

Watching James go through the photos was embarrassing at first, because Q didn't show these to people. He was no professional at this, and the photos were, as he'd said, just a hobby. But as Q watched, he quickly grew amused, realizing that James wasn't frowning at Q's photography skills, but rather frowning at how he looked as a stag. Besides being immodest and handsome and mysterious, Q added 'vain' to his list of descriptors of James.

 

"I look like I was dragged backwards through mud," James muttered, stroking two fingertips down one picture of himself, antlers high and legs hock-deep in a brook.

 

Q had to suppress the urge to giggle. "You look magnificent," he argued, and James immediately looked up at him, apparently checking for sincerity. Q just reached forward instead, digging for another photo - his favorite, one of the stag... James...silhouette against a misty evening, the setting sun between his antlers. "There," Q said softly, proudly, "You can't even see your scars in this one."

 

Seeing James relax a little, appreciation now overriding the grumpiness on his bearded features, Q grew a bit bolder. "Could you...?" he asked. James looked up again as Q trailed off. Tangling his fingers together, then untangling them to drag a hand back through his hair, Q tried again, "Could you change again? Change back? I... This is all still too unreal, but I think that if I could just see it again, I could accept it. Not understand it, but accept it."

 

James looked hesitant, and the wariness in his body and expression was oddly familiar - Q had seen it often enough when the man was a stag. Just as Q had won James over as a deer, however, the man gave in after a moment. "Are you sure?" He was already setting the photos carefully back on Q's desk.

 

Q nodded, not trusting himself with a verbal response. He could feel adrenaline flooding him, making his heart beat faster, his skin feel tingly. The pain in his ankle got pushed further into the back of his head.

 

Still dubious, James murmured, "All right then," and stood. This time, he dropped the towel on purpose, entirely forgetting his very clothed, very human audience. Q flushed, but at least his staring wasn't noted, as James walked away a bit to stand nude in the center of the room. Q had his hands back in his lap again, but he could no more stop his cock from taking interest than he could stop his eyes from watching James' arse, apparently. It was a very nice arse, as muscular as the rest of the man. Q was so busy trying (and failing) to tear his eyes away that he almost missed the transformation, only realizing that it was happening when the skin he was staring at went suddenly ashy and seemed to... There wasn't a word for it. In fact, it somehow hurt Q's eyes to look at, as if every cell in Q's body knew that he was seeing something unnatural. By the time Q blinked, looked away, and made himself look back, there was a fading smokiness in the air - and a stag in the middle of it all.

 

"Holy, _fu_ -!" Q cut himself off, too awed for words. It helped that this creature - James - was familiar to him, so while Q's analytical side was flailing, a large part of him relaxed. He was seeing an old friend again. Q levered himself to his feet. Even though he kept his weight on his good leg, the stag stiffened, taking a pre-emptive step forward. It looked very odd to see such an inherently wild animal in his house, but Q had also been trying to get an up-close look at this stag for ages now - and seeing it... James... damn, this was complicated... while stuck in a leg-trap didn't count. "I was worried that you'd been scared off and wouldn't come back," Q found himself murmuring, reaching forward.

 

Seeming quite aware of Q's limited mobility, James moved forward with measured steps, hooves muffled on carpet. Eyes, fathomlessly black again, watched Q steadily even as they got close enough for Q to touch that furred brow. When James lowered his head a bit, Q stroked up to touch one tine. He giggle a bit hysterically when he realized that he had an absolutely terrifying set of antlers cupping the air around his head right now. James snorted against his chest, a puff of warmth felt right through Q's shirt. "This is insane," Q noted. James inhaled and exhaled gustily again; past the antlers, Q could watched the rise and fall of his mighty chest. At which point Q noticed another thing, and commented, "Your coat looks so much glossier now. Not that it was anything to scoff at before, but you look-"

 

Q cut off with a little startled noise as that smoke-and-ash process began again, this time so close that Q's eyes couldn't shy away from it. He felt a migraine starting between his temples in the mere seconds it took for fur and antler to ash-and-burn itself away to nothing, leaving the man beneath. Q's hand, still extended, slid numbly down James' hair to touch a protruding ear as the man said wryly, "Well, you did let me use your shower."

 

In response, Q tottered. James caught him by the shoulders, and eased him back down into his chair. For once able to ignore the nakedness of the very handsome bloke in front of him, Q said a bit shakily, "Okay, I think I need a bit more alcohol."

 

If James had a comment about how _this_ was what finally tipped Q's logical side over the edge, he didn't voice it. Two transformations was doable; seeing that third and final shift back to human had been a bit much for someone who had spent time in a steel trap just hours before. "Sit," James commanded quietly, then padded out to get the required alcohol. He brought back both of their tumblers again, a bit more full than before, and only really noticed his lack of towel after he was by Q's side again. "Should I apologize?" he asked after a beat, catching up the towel again.

 

Q took down a big enough gulp of whiskey to make his eyes water. Then, glancing at James - who hadn't quite gotten the towel fixed in place again - he looked quickly away and downed another fast swallow. Cheeks and nose now pinked from alcohol as much as shyness, Q rasped with an edge of hysteria in his voice again, "Oh, no, you're fine. You don't have a body that needs hiding anyway. I'm just a bit torn because I also know that you're a _deer_."

 

James watched, increasingly amused now that the whole shape-shifting thing was totally out in the open, as Q continued to drain his glass at a swift pace. James sipped his; he hadn't enjoyed alcohol in far too long, and Q had good tastes. Eventually - inevitably - Q went on, "I mean, I live alone and have for ages, so a suggestively shaped carrot could probably turn me on."

 

It had been so long since James had had someone to joke with - even longer, perhaps, since he'd felt like joking - that the ex-spy couldn't help but reply teasingly, "And I don't fancy even the prettiest doe, so after all this time away from human company, I've got a bit of a hair-trigger libido, too, if we're sharing secrets."

 

Q spat out the last mouthful of his whiskey, and ended up coughing hard enough that James patted his back out of pity.

 

Putting the towel back on to ease Q's mind (and apparently other parts of him, although the bulge in Q's pants was definitely appealing to James' ego), James sat back down to continue looking through photos. He had to admit, they were quite good. His ego purred a bit more.

 

"So... what now?" Q asked, once he'd regained his equilibrium again. He was obviously trying not to ogle James, but wasn't succeeding. James didn't mind, though. It was rather nice to be eyed again by a human being. Doing a bit of subtle ogling in return, James had to admit that Q was easy on the eyes, too. And more than that, he seemed easy on James' soul somehow. Looking back down at the photo of himself, recognizing the green little glade, James recalled how quietly and for how long Q had sat at the edge of the trees, just waiting for him. Talking to him. Never demanding, but obviously hopeful that this scarred, rough old stag would step out of the shadows.

 

James had come out eventually.

 

It seemed that he was repeatedly coming out of the shadows for this strange young man.

 

"Well, either I could transform back and spend the rest of the season eating at the saplings behind your house-" he said nonchalantly, and felt instantly warm inside as Q stiffened, clearly not liking the idea. Looking down at another photo to make his pleased smile less obvious, James offered the other option, "Or I continue to scandalize you by lazing around naked in your house, because I don't think my clothes are fit to wear anymore."

 

Q was pretty sure, at this point, that James was going to be the death of him. To be fair, it would be a very glorious sort of death, but probably very embarrassing, because the morticians would probably have to explain to his family that he'd died of sexual frustration and that they'd have to do a partially closed casket ceremony to hide his final hard-on. Q tried reminding himself that James had been a deer until just a few hours ago, but somehow, it was hard to warn himself way with fabricated ideas of bestiality when James was so obviously human now.

 

Human and basically naked and hot as hell.

 

"I... I might have some clothes that will fit you, but I'm honestly not sure," Q fumbled his way into being a gracious host, however belatedly. He was starting to feel all of the alcohol, and it made his usually sharp mind slow as he tried to think about what drawers held the largest clothes. Q and James were almost of a height, but Q was definitely slimmer. "I can't exactly go and fetch you something with this bum leg of mine, but if you look in the bedroom across the hall..." Q tried to recall what drawer held sex toys, and which one was safe to have ex-spies sometimes-stags look through. He decided to play it safe. "...The closet might have a few things. You're free to whatever fits."

 

"You're sure you don't mind me pawing through your things?" James was either very polite, or he was stalling and didn't want to get up from his elegant sprawl in the chair across from Q. He'd finished looking through all of the photos of himself already.

 

"So long as you don't touch any of the tech," Q said, "Photography doesn't pay the bills, but hacking does." Realizing that his mouth had gotten away with him, Q frowned, and amended, "I should probably describe my day job in a more flattering way."

 

"I'll forget that you're a hacker if you forget that I'm a spy," James offered with a crooked smile as he finally levered himself up. As he passed Q to head towards the bedroom - and the promise of clothes - his hand landed on Q's shoulder, squeezing warmly. It was nice. Watching the muscles on James' back and thighs shift and flex as the man walked away was nice, too. Because alcohol was loosening his tongue, Q found himself calling out before he could stop himself, "I don't know why you think any of those scars are ugly - except maybe the fresh one, on your shoulder, but it just needs time."

 

Bond paused, looking back over his shoulder - the injured one, with the scar that Q had just mentioned, the one he'd noticed even when James was still a stag. An injury that had made Q want to defend the stag in some way, and now gave him some idea of just how tough James was. Scars told Q a lot, even if he technically barely knew anything about James. "You're drunk, Q," James said gently.

 

Q shook his head, ending with his cheek against the back of the chair and his eyes still on Bond. He argued back placidly, "Not that drunk." Drunk enough to feel peaceful; not drunk enough to lie.

 

When James looked away again, it was in a movement reminiscent of his stag form - not quite a tossing of his antlers, but that slow shifting of a head made heavy by a bone crown. He didn't say anything, but Q felt that that was answer enough, and smiled. He saw that James had left his glass behind, and there was still a bit of whiskey left in it…

 

~^~

 

When James came back a bit later - having found trousers and a sleeveless shirt that mostly fit, and having also found a vibrating cock ring that was _very_ intriguing - Q had fallen asleep on his chair, bent over the desk. His glasses were still on, getting bent as he pillowed one cheek against an arm, and there were two empty tumblers by his fingertips. James snorted fondly, unable to deny the warmth he felt unfurling beneath his breastbone. How he'd ever been wary of this man, he had no idea. Stepping forward, footsteps animal-quiet in a way that had as much to do with MI6 training as with his shapeshifting abilities, James dared to reach out with one hand. He stroked it over soft black curls.

 

"You make absolutely no sense," James murmured out loud, expecting no response, because if Q had been somewhat alert and sober before, he most certainly wasn't now. But that was all right. Already knowing the feel of a limp and uncooperative boffin in his arms, James picked Q up with little trouble, and this time walked him to the bedroom. He should have been more worried: he'd shown his face, talked about his past. Even if his shapeshifting secret weren't an issue, he'd let someone else know that he'd been a spy once - and he suspected that Q knew he'd been a good one. Being a good spy usually didn't endear him to people, yet he couldn't bring himself to feel bitter or worried.

 

Because all of those facts were scars. Old. Immovable. Many of them deep. All a part of him.

 

And Q had said that they were beautiful.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was written based on a photos (featured in the story below) posted by the wonderful [Tsuyu](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsuyu). It was too beautiful a picture to resist writing about <3


	8. In Which Everyone's a Shapeshifter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has a human form an an animal one, but Q was dealt an unlucky hand a birth. He avoids it by staying human, until circumstances force him to shapeshifter under dangerous circumstances... 
> 
> Tags/Warnings: shapeshifter!AU (obviously); a bit pre-relationship (00Q is totally there is you're looking, though); canon-typical violence; predator-prey-relationships; a bit of hurt-comfort; cotton-candy-sweet ending

Q had always been hyper-aware of the small size of his animal-form, even after the increased anti-predation laws that finally made it fully illegal for carnivorous Were-creatures to freely kill herbivorous ones and claim "instinctual insanity." Q himself had theoretically always been safe, since he himself was a carnivore - he was just so bloody small that he may as well have been a prey-animal, and it made him self-conscious to say the least. He'd been teased about his small size as a child, when both his human and his animal self had been minute, and sadly, only one of those versions of him seemed to have done any growing in the meanwhile.

 

Working as the Quartermaster of MI6 was perhaps not the obvious choice for someone who, in animal form, was about the size of a conservative loaf of bread. Most MI6 agents were, at the very least, predators - most were pretty impressive ones. Even Moneypenny transformed into a modestly-sized fossa, and the smallest 00-agent transformed into a mink. While that agent and Q were probably in the same weight-class, in animal-form Q didn't fool himself into thinking that he'd ever walk out of that fight alive. Mink were mean as fuck. Q was politely peeved at worst by comparison.

 

And to make matters worse, he'd been told by family members that he looked _cute_ as a peeved kitten.

 

To avoid the inevitable issues, Q did his job exclusively in human form, and generally avoided transforming unless he was home alone. It was easier that way. And it made it less likely that he'd be eaten by a 00-agent.

 

Q thought that he'd gotten used to working around large predators: 006's wolf was huge but otherwise pretty typical, and while 008 was a bear, it was only intimidating until you realized that he used to accidentally shapeshift and get himself stuck in things as a teenager. 009 had a snarky temper but was actually rather shy about his black-leopard body, and 001 was frankly more of a harpy when she was human-shaped than when she was a harpy eagle (as an eagle, she was actually incredibly courteous, which Q appreciated, especially on the one day when she was stuck in her shape and he was the only one around to wrap towels around his arm in a makeshift gauntlet and carry her from Medical to Psych). Basically, Q was getting used to dealing with terrifying predators, and was even managing to ignore how easily they could eat him. Granted, most of them could have eaten him even if he was human-shaped...

 

Including 007.

 

Everyone had thought that 007 was dead, but apparently the man shook off death like his animal form shed skin. The agent could transform into what was, quite frankly, the biggest python Q had ever seen. Shapeshifters often had forms that were larger than the actual animal (002's wolf-sized coyote a prime example), but James was impressive even by those standards, and Q's heart gave a painful stutter in his chest the first time he saw it. Even freshly back from being declared dead, and clearly rough around the edges, 007 had enough size to him that he could have definitely handled human prey without much trouble. And according to his record, he _had_. The first time they met, it was all Q could do to keep his hands from shaking, and to remind himself that he was only a bite-sized kitten when he _chose_ to be, and he'd most certainly not be changing shape with a reptilian monster like 007 back at MI6. The man himself was even a bit snake-like: coldly calculating, smooth as scales, and also horrifyingly fast and strong. In a nutshell, everything that Q had been taught to avoid since childhood.

 

As time passed, though, they started to get along... more or less. Q's deeply-buried fears kept him from truly being friends with anyone like James - and while most people just assumed it was because he was an overly professional prude, if anyone had paid attention, they'd have realized that he only distanced himself from predatory shapeshifters. Despite being the MI6 operative who'd known Q for the shortest amount of time, it was Bond who figured that out first.

 

Back from a mission to Brazil (in which 007 and 001 had clearly felt right at home), James had turned in his kit and then proceeded to just lean against one of the standing consoles and watch Q work for nearly half an hour. Just as Q was starting to legitimately forget the blond-haired man's presence, James spoke up, "You're a prey-animal, aren't you?"

 

To Bond's credit, he'd waited until Q was passing nearby, with no one else nearby, before speaking. It was really rather polite, coming from a man who spied and killed for a living. His tone wasn't even particularly judgmental, although Q still froze, eyes flashing up to meet thoughtfully puzzled blue ones. Because the truth of the matter was more embarrassing than James' assumption, and also because lying to an agent of Bond's calibre was frankly impossible, Q answered as steadily as he could manage, "That's really none of your business." He walked away, fully expecting an interrogation to follow.

 

He was pleasantly surprised when it didn't. Instead, James hovered in Q-branch for another nerve-wracking fifteen minutes or so, and then disappeared like smoke.

 

A week after that and Bond was on another mission in Siberia, where his animal form was basically useless, and his human form would have been shot full of bullets had Q not intervened and scrambled a helicopter's controls and made it crash into the villains. Q was just glad that he hadn't lost an agent, and didn't honestly think about it on a personal level until James returned to London and Q came to work to find scones and coffee in his office. It took looking on the security cameras to realize that it had been a gift from James. Not long after, 003 apparently made a disparaging remark about Q being a spineless nerd, and James calmly threatened to use 003’s vocal cords for violin strings. Apparently James rather liked Q now, or at least appreciated Q's life-saving abilities. It was a bit hard for Q to wrap his head around the whole idea, especially since he found James' human form rather easy on the eyes, but still found his animal form deeply terrifying.

 

"Why does he like me?" Q eventually asked R, whose animal shape was a rabbit. While Q was fully aware of how scary even a rabbit could be, he nonetheless felt at ease around her in a way that he didn't - couldn't - around predators like Bond. "It's not like other coworkers haven't saved his life before now."

 

They were sharing coffee in the breakroom way too late at night, neither of them planning on sleeping for at least another twelve hours, and R - who had been in Q-branch before Q himself took the job - blew over her hot drink before answering. When she did speak, however, her response was surprisingly straightforward, "Look at it this way: most everyone who's saved 007's neck has done it to save the mission. You said 'screw the mission'-" Q made a scoffing noise, but R cut him off, "You literally said 'Screw the mission' under your breath," so Q fell silent again, feeling his ears pink. She went on, "I think that that's the part that makes this situation different - not a lot of people have ever just saved James Bond." She reached out and patted her boss's shoulder almost pityingly, "And that's why you now have a 00-agent imprinted on you like an under-loved duckling. Congrats."

 

It sounded like some kind of a curse, in Q's point of view.

 

Inevitably, other people began asking the same sort of question that James had asked, because people were curious like that, and Q was apparently an enigma. It didn't seem like James had spread any rumors, though, which was remarkably civil of him. Q continued to keep his lips sealed, stiffly deflecting all questions and basically letting people believe whatever they wanted. Suspicions apparently varied from: 1) Q is a dormouse, 2) Q is a frickin' giraffe, to 3) shit, can Q shapeshift into a Komodo dragon and is keeping it in so as not to traumatize 007? It would have been funny if Q weren't so self-conscious about it all. He'd been conditioned since childhood that being so vulnerable small, even if he was technically a predator, was not a laughing matter. He'd even been chased by a larger cat once, and actually still had scars on his upper back, at the knobbiest part of his spine before his neck, where teeth had sunken in and shaken him.

 

Therefore, even when R (over another way-too-late cup of coffee) asked him what his animal shape was, he dodged the question. He'd seen her rabbit form; she was big enough to hurt him, too. As much as he knew she never would, he had gone too long keeping his secret to easily let it out now.

 

Unfortunately, the universe had other ideas.

 

~^~

 

If Q ever found this villain, he was going to strangle her with his bare hands. And then drop her in a vat of battery acid. What kind of person just gassed MI6 headquarters with a experimental drug and then just ran away?! To be fair, though, the purpose of the gas - which, despite being experimental, was working horrendously well - was to force-shift everyone into their animal shapes. This was what happened when Naturalist terrorists (the psychos who thought it was natural for wolves to eat elk, even if the wolf and the elk were actually sentient human beings half the time) got chemistry degrees.

 

Q had never been so fucking angry and so fucking scared at the same time in his entire life.

 

But since he was presently pint-sized, there wasn't much he could do about it.

 

The drug seemed to be affecting some people worse than others - and by that, it seemed to be making some MI6 denizens more _instinctually inclined_ than others. Q felt mostly himself, albeit stuck in a feline form, but just now he'd hidden under a desk and watched Moneypenny chase R across the room. It looked like R had escaped, but the fervor with which Moneypenny's fossa form had moved was totally unlike her, and deeply terrifying. She was all predator, and that meant she wasn't thinking friend or foe - she was thinking _prey_ or foe. Q remained huddled where he was, dark-furred tail curled up tight around his haunches, and barely breathed until she prowled away. MI6 had been turned into a zoo, a zoo with no walls to keep the exhibits apart. And only some of the animals were 'domesticated.'

 

Q suspected that he himself was not totally unaffected; it was harder to keep his logical side at the fore, harder to push down the instinct to puff up his fur and hiss, or to stuff his small body into small places. It was harder to tell himself to just calm the fuck down, hop up on that chair, and lean over to work the door handle with his paws. If he could just get to where he could redirect the vents...

 

There was a low hissing behind him. It was entirely instincts that had Q freezing where he was and arching his back, feeling his entire dark pelt stand on end.

 

The hiss had sounded serpentine and low to the floor, but when Q's head swiveled, his eyes picked up an owl coming at him from above, wings silent and talons already extended. Q had just enough time to stiffen and then leap off the chair he'd been perched on, still trying to get the door-handle open. The owl let out a piercing shriek as it missed, and Q's escape was so narrow that he was buffeted by stiff flight-feathers even as the owl crashed into the back of the chair. Knocked off-balance mid-leap, even Q's feline balance was unable to completely save him from a hand landing. He registered pain all along his right side as he landed, but he was still able to get his paws under him, tail sweeping about as a counterbalance. A glance told him that the owl was recover, and that it - he? She? Q couldn't think straight enough to even remember which of his coworkers transformed into a great-horned owl. It was all he could do to keep reminding himself that he needed to get to the ventilation controls more than he needed to find a place to hide.

 

This time the owl recovered itself enough to let loose a thrumming hoot, before turning to begin the hunt again. Q slid under a table just in time to heard the heavy thunk of the bird landing atop it. ' _Shit. Shit shit shit_...' Q repeated to himself, his small ribcage flaring and deflating as he panted, open-mouthed. He tried to look for another avenue, but his brain kept rebelling. It was so hard to hold a plan together in his head that Q released an actual yowl of frustration - and then cowered as the owl lofted down from the table to begin stalking its prey on foot. While Q realized that he was the more agile of the two on the ground, he still found his ears flattening and his tail fluffing up as he took in the pure, intimidating size of the owl in front of him.

 

And as much as Q wanted to just run, he couldn't - not if he wanted to fix this. He _needed_ to get through that door.

 

So, despite all of the instincts howling otherwise, Q arched his back to make himself as big as possible, and bared his pearly sharp teeth in a hiss. It sounded pitifully quiet compared to the owl's wild voice.

 

But then another hiss echoed Q's - the same hiss he'd heard before, only louder, more viperine, and coming from the left.

 

The owl didn't know what hit it. It was a massive bird, but the python that exploded out from behind the filing cabinet was bigger, and its jaws all but folded around an entire wing in the time it took to blink. While Q had struggled to recall just who the owl was, he had no trouble recognizing 007, even as the rest of the snake surged into view, coils doubling up around a thrashing, feathered body while jaws clenched. The owl's shrieking faded away to rasping chokes in shockingly little time, as its body disappeared beneath scaled muscle. Q could only stare, claws out and back still frozen in the most intimidating arch it could manage, as his previous attacker was swiftly smothered into submission.

 

Then, with eerily unhinged movements, the snake's - James' - jaws parted and released. Even as a snake, his eyes retained their striking blueness, cold and unblinking, and they fixed on Q as James' head swiveled.

 

Panic jolted Q into motion again, enough at least so that he hurriedly shuffled backwards. His fluffy haunches bumped into a chairleg, and he could feel the deep bruising on one side, making it hard not to limp - not to show more weakness than he already had. James was releasing the owl, sliding off it in a smooth yet heavy movement. His head was nearly longer than Q's entire body, and while, oddly enough, it looked like the owl was still weakly breathing, Q wouldn't be that lucky. A fraction of the power James had (as a humor or a snake, to be honest) could break Q's bones, and that was just about enough to make Q give up. His furred body in fact dropped into a low crouch, a small mewl for help coming out, the kind of noise that didn't expect any answer. In response, a forked tongue flicked his way, and another of James' coils slipped off his previous victim. The owl twitched but didn't get up. Q looked around for exits, fight or flight instincts set firmly on the latter, as they had been ever since he'd realized that he wasn't going to grow any bigger.

 

But then he remembered that if he didn't get through that door, this nightmare would continue, and people would die.

 

Courage flaring back to life (the tiny voice saying that he was about to die shoved firmly back into a corner), Q lifted his tail again, a grey-black flag that he fluffed up to maximum capacity. He also released his most vicious hiss, and was incredibly chuffed when James actually froze mid-slither, head lifting off the floor in brief surprise.

 

Q took advantage of that momentary halt, and immediately turned to the chair he'd bumped into - the same he'd been on top of before, trying to reach the doorknob. The muscles in his right leg spasmed and it felt like something tore when he jumped, but he managed to scramble onto the chair, panting. However, when he then tried to get at the door again, he had no more luck than before - he simply couldn't reach, and the unfairness of it all had him crying out again, high-pitched and desperate. He refused to look down and back, even as his sensitive ears swiveled, picking up the dry, smooth sound of a reptile's body moving closer and closer. Only when Q felt the chair actually creak as a massive weight leaned against it did Q realize he had to give up on the door and try to live a little bit longer - even if it meant standing up to a snake that he honestly wasn't sure he'd have been able to take on as a man. Dropping onto all fours and spinning, Q found himself all but face-to-face with a wedge-shaped head, tongue still darting forth, what seemed like kilometers of body trailing behind. Q hissed again, still as loudly as he could manage, and lashed out with bared claws. James moved back just enough to be out of reach, but didn't seemed deterred.

 

Although, oddly enough, he didn't seem in any hurry to strike either. That puzzled Q for a second, until he realized that James had thrown a coil around the entire chair, and suddenly Q was in very real danger of being caught within a loop of scales. He still refused to give up his perch, a last wild hope burning in him that he could still do this. Made daring by this mad hope, Q charged forward, and managed to in fact drag his claws right across Bond's scaled snout.

 

James immediately recoiled, head jerking up and away, out of Q's reach unless the pint-sized Quartermaster wanted to charge him again. Which he almost did, in an insane, I'm-going-to-die-so-fuck-it sort of way. However, when James merely paused where he was, jaw stretching open and flexing in a way that reminded Q of human-James very much (R had punched James in the jaw once, and James had paused, given his jaw a quick flex to test if she'd broken it, and had then shrugged and admitted he deserved it), Q hesitated. Still standing stiffly with his fur on end and his ears molded back against his head, Q stared at the snake for a moment. In return, James closed his mouth - having apparently assessed the relatively mild damage - and angled his head to regard Q in turn. It was a remarkably patient look, and Q found himself sagging in the beginnings of relief. _'James_?' he asked, but only a plaintive mewl came out.

 

The snake's head lowered. It came dangerously close in doing so, of course, but the slow way that James was moving was a far cry from the speed he was capable of when striking. Q still tensed and backed up until he nearly fell off the chair, even as James' tapered, scaled head came to rest in front of him. The next time Bond's forked tongue flicked out, it tickled Q's left paw. Q immediately lifted it out of the way, but that meant he had to put more weight on his right paw, and that whole side felt like one massive bruise. With a squeak of pain, Q wobbled and had to brace himself on all four paws again. In response, James slid just a fraction closer, tongue against fur again, unblinking eyes like twin sapphires right on Q. No striking. No biting. No body-crushing coils of pure muscle.

 

Hardly daring to believe that James was holding onto his sanity like Q was, the Quartermaster quivered with nerves even as he lifted a paw - his right one, this time - and slowly reached forward with it. Sans claws, this time... be booped James on the nose. Where the scales were not clawed.

 

James released a deep, almost- _husshhhh_ -sounding breath, but otherwise didn't react. He just stayed where he was, like an obedient agent waiting for orders.

 

Q shook so hard in relief that he nearly lost his footing despite being quadrupedal. He wasn't even sure how to describe the noise he made, only that, if he'd been human, it would have sounded a lot like crying. All this while he'd worried that he was the only sane person left in the place, or at least that he wasn't going to get any back-up. He'd lived so much of his life alone that he'd started ignoring how much it helped to... to, well, to have help. He was scared, he was hurting, but now he at least wasn't alone.

 

Lacking a way to communicate but now with his hope expanding exponentially like a supernova in his chest, Q once again turned to the doorknob, shakily leaning against the back of the chair to try and reach the prize again. He didn't breathe for a moment, hoping that he wasn't just imagining James' awareness and benevolence as he heard scales sliding again, ever nearer. When something brushed him, Q’s breath caught in his small lungs, and he held himself very still. He could barely comprehend the maelstrom of feelings that assaulted him as he swiveled an eye to watch James extend past him, the snake's cheek brushing up Q's side seemingly unintentionally. Q wobbled a bit as he was bumped, but breathed a sigh of relief that rustled his whiskers as it became clear that James - instead of trying to eat him - had seen Q's intentions and was going for the doorknob. Body mounting the chair in thick coil that belted Q's hind-paws, James rose up easily, and as his weight looped over the handle, the latch withdrew with a click and the door slid open.

 

Q's relief was so great that he actually mewed, hopping down off the chair. His injured side nearly buckled again, but he recovered, adrenalin doing a lot to cover the pain. Renewed hope did a lot of good, too. With the shadow of a truly massive snake above him, it was hard to feel the fear that Q had been feeling... to some extend, his entire life. He slipped through the door with only a slight hesitation, just pausing long enough to look back and see that James was following. If there was another big predator here, it would think twice about attacking.

 

From there it was simple. Sometimes things were a bit out of Q's reach, jumping up on things, but James was more helpful now as a snake than he probably was as an agent, and if Q mewled at him enough and hopped about or nudged him, the massive snake got the idea and would coil up into something Q could climb. Despite not having thumbs, Q as a cat was still fairly dexterous, although the more he moved, the more he realized his aches and pains. Still, he realized that he was better off than James, who had no limbs at all to do things like this. Philosophically, Q realized that he and James were coexisting as they usually did: each had skills the others lacked, James coming through in the category of strength while Q covered most everything else. It made Q feel just a teensy bit better about his stunted size as he got the air vents to change their flow

 

By Q's reckoning, the drug would lose affect as it dissipated, meaning that it hopefully wouldn't affect the surrounding populace if it was vented from MI6 and into the open air. Frankly, at this point, he wasn't sure if he cared. Sitting on a table-top now and reeling from post-adrenalin exhaustion, Q swayed a bit and released a puffing sigh. He felt a tongue touch his tail, but only had the strength to swivel one ear. James grew a bit more insistent, though, moving his head forward and nudging at Q's flank. James still had a few dried beads of blood on his snout, but the injury didn't seem to bother him.

 

Q tried to make James understand that he didn't have the energy to move anymore, that he was a small creature who burned energy very, very quickly, and he'd used it all just trying to survive and then fix this. Surely they could just wait now until the air cleared and everyone came back to their senses...? James kept nudging, though, and when Q still didn't want to move, James looped more of his body up onto the table until Q found himself next to a thick mass of scales. A more firm nuzzle pushed Q until the feline Quartermaster more or less stumbled up onto James' back.

 

Marveling that James was almost more gentle as a snake than he was as a human, Q simply settled down on his belly and hung on while James got moving again. He felt a bit bad around digging his claws in from time to time, but the snake under him didn't seem to mind.

 

~^~

 

Q didn't immediately realize it, because he was so tired, but they ended up in his Q-branch office. Thankfully it wasn't locked, or a complicated sort of handle, so James was able to handle it without help. They heard a few animal sounds in the distance, but nothing came close enough to do more than spook Q before they were in his office and James' flexing tail pushed the door closed again. Q couldn't smell any signs of another body in here, and he sagged right down until he was a puddle against James' back; he nearly slide off, in fact. Relief was like a soporific in his system. He released a weak mew. James looked back at him for a moment, canted his head, and then looped back to check on him. There was no more rush to be anywhere, and it was only a matter of time before sweet normalcy returned.

 

Before normalcy, however, there was still a bit of weirdness - but the good kind. The good kind of weird, like how James tongued at him a few more times, tickling Q's whiskers and his ears, flicking against the smattering of white hairs on Q's nape. Q had dark fur of medium length, patches of it varying from sable to grey to black, but Q's fur had grown in with white strands where his old bite-scars lay. This was probably the first time he'd let a non-family-member see them like this. Q actually closed his eyes as the whisper of tongue became a brush of a scaled chin, and the body under him moved. Q let it move. He was too tired and triumphant to care.

 

He was nearly dozing by the time James stopped moving again, and Q was vaguely aware that he felt cradled. Realizing that he was half asleep, Q roused himself, and with a few torpid blinks realized that he now had a sea of scales around him. James had made a nest of himself, circles upon circles of power like a magic spell made with his body. James finished it then by resting his head on the top of it all, where he could see everything but also had Q's silky back beneath his throat. Q had never felt so much like a king; nor had any king felt so loved by a throne.

 

~^~

 

When Q woke up, it was briefly, and he was still groggy and felt honestly terrible... but not as terrible as he'd expected, because he was also far warmer than he'd been when he'd gone to sleep. He released an involuntary purr and relaxed despite his aching muscles. In fact, he tried to turn and snuggle his sore side against the heat, and was surprised when he felt a hand cup his body and a human voice make soothing noises at him, "Shh shh shh, I got you." James' voice. James was human again. Q wasn't, and he tried to freak out about that... but he was _warm_. He was feeling the heat of James' belly through the man's shirt, and the agent's hand was warm, too, and it felt like it was holding him together. Q stopped wriggling, lifted his head just enough to wearily assure himself that at least he and James were still the only ones in his office... Okay, that was good. Maybe it was okay to be a cat with James right now - but no one else! Q left his head flop down again. One of James' fingertips curled in just the teensiest bit, touching Q's nose in the subtlest of touches. Q made a _mrrrr_ noise in his chest that was meant to sound irritated, but he fell asleep before he could finish it.

 

~^~

 

When Q woke up again, he felt a bit more alert. He also wasn't on Bond’s stomach anymore, although he still felt warm and strangely safe. The world was rumbling and vibrating steadily around him, although when he opened his eyes, he saw mostly darkness. The was cloth under him that smelled like James, and as he stood up, he realized that he was in a box with a jacket tossed over it. Nosing out, Q saw the inside of a car. He was in a box in the passenger seat. Before he could grow anxious, he saw that Bond was driving, human-shaped and looking calm. When the man turned to look at him, however, Q could see healing cuts like the thinnest of threads on his cheek and across his mouth. Q felt bad, but the only way to express that would be to turn back, and it would be very awkward to transform while sitting inside of a small box... and besides, the box felt nice and cozy and Q hadn't been in a decent box since kittenhood…

 

James' smile was small, but looked oddly jaunty and roguish with the cuts across one side of it. "Ah, you're awake. I figured that before someone came hunting for you in your office, it would be best to sneak you out. Unless I'm incorrect in thinking that you hate people seeing you like this?"  James' voice and expression was bland, but the one raised eyebrow said a lot, and Q sank a bit back into the box. He folded his ears back self-consciously and looked away.

 

In response, James made a humming noise of acceptance, still relaxed and driving. "I texted M and told her you were okay, and with me. I don't know if she believed both of those statements at once, but hopefully there won't be a full-on manhunt for you, at least not immediately.  006 is hunting the terrorist who did this, so that’s everyone’s priority right now." James eased the car through traffic, then slid it to a stop and put it in park. Q's ears flicked forward again in surprise as a hand then reached for him, but before he could slip back into the box entirely, there was a hand on his scruff. "Hey, now, none of that," James admonished as Q made a startled, disgruntled noise. Unexpectedly, instead of pulling Q out by his nape as some would have, James opted to let go, instead pushing the box's covering back and looking at where Q had huddled in one corner. "You didn't seem too badly hurt," James said by way of explanation, even as he reached forward again. Q hissed a little but ultimately did nothing, watching tensely as calloused fingertips touched his right shoulder in the gentlest way. Nothing more. James' restraint was both confusing and appreciated. "I'm guessing you've got some muscle-deep bruising. I saw you fall. Are you hurt anywhere else?" James finished seriously.

 

After a moment of just measuring the 00-agent with his eyes, Q shook his head 'No.' James' hand retreated to the side of the box. Q watched it go, still sitting against the corner and unsure what to do in this new situation. He dared 007 to make a comment about his lamentably underwhelming size. The agent was smart enough to do no such thing.

 

Instead, James' hand went back to the gear-shift, and soon he was easing it back into drive again. "In that case, you may as well come back to mine. I'm sure that MI6 is a bloody mess right now, and I've got laundry to do anyway."

 

Q had no idea why that remarkably mundane plan had anything to do with him, but he didn't have a voice to complain with, and wasn't sure what he would have said anyway.

 

~^~

 

Q hadn't tried to transform back by the time they arrived at James' flat; he hadn't even tried to leave the box, which was now tucked under Bond's arm as they walked up to the second floor. Q was lightly quivering with anticipation, not sure exactly why, but realizing that this was something new in his life. He was with another human being - a predator, no less - and he was in his animal form, but he didn't feel threatened. And he wasn't feeling judged, either. James still hadn't said anything about how Q was half the size of what he should have been. In fact, James hadn't even complained about Q scratching his face, although as soon as they got in James' flat and Q's box was put down on the floor, the agent disappeared down a hallway and Q heard a sink running - any wound from a cat had to be cleaned. Left to his own devices as if that were only natural, Q placed his paws on the edge of the box and tentatively leaned out. Then hopped out, stiffness only hampering him slightly. Now would be the perfect time to change back, to shed his small form for something larger and more durable. This novel sensation of being safe in his second skin, however, kept him in his fur, though - although he did spare a moment to close his eyes, reach for the ability to change... And yes, there it was. He _could_ change back, if and when he wanted to.  The gas’ effects had worn off.

 

Eventually James came back, face looking fresh and smelling of antiseptic. He started by looking at head-height for a human, then looked down to where he now had a cat nosing around his sofa. "Fuck, Q, are you stuck as a cat still?" he asked, plainly worried.

 

A bit embarrassed, Q hunkered down and curled his tail around his paws, shaking his head. He abruptly felt anxious again, old nerves resurfacing as he looked up, up, up to see James' face, making him realizing how small and underfoot he was. As if reading Q's mind, though, James squatted down. He was still a big man, but less looming this way. "So you can turn back, if you wanted to?" James asked carefully.

 

Q nodded.

 

"But you're...?" James started, then made a frustrated noise and looked away. "I can't word that as a yes-or-no question, and you can't very well answer any other way," he muttered under his breath. Q felt a flicker of humor and twitched his tail.

 

~^~

 

Despite James' frustration and Q's lingering unease at these novel conditions, things settled into something quite mundane after that. James did indeed end up doing laundry, although not before filling a bowl with water and leaving it on the floor for Q. A can of tuna was likewise found and opened, and Q did nothing but rejuvenate his energy reserves for at least a good ten minutes. "Small cat, big appetite," James observed as he came back into the kitchen to see Q polishing off the open can. Other than that, however, no comment was made, and James switched to doing dishes. Apparently 00-agents had all sorts of household chores to catch up on, on their off-days.

 

There must have been a load of laundry all ready for the dryer, because not long after Q had eaten his fill and cleaned off his face, paws, and whiskers, James was heading back to the laundry room. The agent paused mid-step, one foot actually lifted, and turned back over his shoulder to call, "Q, come here." Usually, that sort of impish look on 007 heralded terrible things, but Q was sleepy with food, and his aches and pains were tolerable - so he did as commanded, trotting along as James' heels. They entered the laundry room together, Q sitting back at the doorway and wondering ridiculously if he was about to be asked to help fold things. Instead, after loading a basket with dry towels, James turned to him, hesitated, and then asked, "Can I pick you up? I'll treat you more gently than I do tech, I promise."

 

Perhaps if Q wasn't so dozy with a full stomach, he'd had been more worried about that, but as it was, he found himself nodding without thinking. At some point, he'd come to trust James more than anyone he'd known in years. He only wriggled a little as James bent over him and fingers slipped under Q's belly, lifting. For a disconcerting moment, Q's paws paddled the air, and it was fearful reflex to grab at the hand and wrist within reach - only barely remembering not to claw. He was sure that James felt the sharp tips needling him nonetheless, because he apologized. Q was only aloft for a couple seconds, however, before his feet was touching down again and James was letting him go. For a second, Q was disoriented.

 

Then he realized he was atop dry, warm towels, and he sank into a fluffy puddle. The purr was totally involuntary and embarrassingly loud.

 

Bond's chuckle was to be expected - less expected was how fond it sounded. "Stay as long as you like, Q," he murmured softly, and Q thought that James meant more than just here, in this room, sitting on James' towels. The agent returned to reloading the washer and dryer without further elaboration, however, making the silence feel comfortable and natural, even as Q drifted off into one of the gentlest sleeps of his life. He had a feeling he kept purring, especially when he dreamed of one gun-calloused finger very softly stroking between his ears.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As with all of the chapters/ficlets posted here, this story is finished, but anyone is of course welcome to write more on it :) Just be sure to credit where it started (and give me a link so that I can read it). The great and wonderful fabricdragon is already writing, and you can find their work [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14623689/chapters/33796107). 
> 
> *scurries off to come up with more excuses to transform Q into some tiny feline that Bond has to be very gentle with*


	9. The new M

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things get better with age... including James Bond. Or: the fic in which James is the new M, but the shenanigans continue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: older!James; Q is still Quartermaster; James is M; but that doesn't mean he stays out of trouble; disrespectful young pups like to hit on Q; disrespectful young pups learn lessons; innuendos; invasion of personal space
> 
> No hard warnings for this one :)

In Q's humble opinion, quite a few things got better with age: whiskey, cast iron skillets... sex. That last one he didn't talk about in polite conversation, but he'd definitely admitted it to Bond, after the man became too old to be an agent but apparently the perfect age for other things. God knew the man had had a million tricks in bed when he and Q had first become lovers, and he'd only learned more over time. Besides that, James had also apparently become the perfect age for more mundane things, like marriage. Oh, and becoming MI6's latest M.

Q still had his position as Quartermaster, and he was finally old enough that no one challenged him anymore - no more spots, no more jibes about his youth, at least from anyone but James himself, in good fun. While James had grown more tempered and calm with age, he was still the same man, full of mischief.

And lethal as hell. 

"Hey, Quartermaster," a young pup of an agent chirruped from across a table full of dismantled bomb parts, "I hear you like it dangerous, but isn't it time for a newer model? Bond looks a little worn around the edges." Q glanced up from his work to see the expected leer in eyes too young and stupid to know what real danger looked like - at least, when that danger was wrapped up in a benign enough package. Nice suits. A calming, disarming smile. Blond hair gone white.

That was the problem with these younger agents, Q thought with a sigh (straightening in the hopes that the kid would stop ogling his arse): They could see a gun, a knife, and know that it was a threat. But give them something more cunning and they totally overlooked the killing edge on it altogether.

"Mr. Sims," Q said levelly, recalling the new agent's last name, "I'd recommend you change the subject."

"Why?" Another leer, full of what Sims no doubt thought was charm. Oh, this pup didn't know what charm was. Charm was Bond in nothing but jogging trousers and a few beads of sweat, still managing to lounge on a chair and make it into a throne. "Getting a little too hot for your posh little self?"

The 'little' comment was annoying. Q let his professional mask finally slip into a scowl. His also let his voice slip into a register that James had taught him, a precisely low pitch that was quiet and cool like the dirt at the bottom of an open grave, "Because if you continue it, the man who just walked up behind you is either going to fire you or rip you limb-from-limb."

On long days or just cold days, Q knew that James' joins creaked and his old wounds ached. But that didn't mean the man could no longer walk like a fucking cat, something leonine imbedded permanently in his step. Now, he'd just snuck up on one of MI6's saucy new goldenboys, and it was all Q could do not to grin. Out of all the little pleasures Q had in his life, watching James put young guns in their place was one of the top ones on the list.

It helped that some of Bond's more ruthless personality traits had perhaps worn off on Q over the years. Younger-Q might have tried to diffuse the situation... younger-Q would also have had a lot less fun in his life. Now, Q merely leaned forward and folded his forearms upon the table again, knowing that no one was going to be eyeing his arse while Bond was in the room.

To be fair, that fact didn't necessarily have to do with Bond defending Q's virtue - it probably had more to do with the fact that James Bond naturally drew a lot of attention himself. No one was really watching Q anymore - they were watching their boss, M. White-gold hair accenting eyes that had lost none of their cut-glass blueness; a calm expression that belied the hell-raiser that James had once been (and sometimes, secretly, still was); a scar from his right ear to the edge of his upper lip should have given people a hint at just what this man could survive; a tattoo just visible over the edge of his shirt-collar, delicate lines that Q had kissed on late nights. He knew just how much ink was hidden beneath Bond's clothing. James didn't show it off much - he had a professional facade to maintain, after all - but Q was in on the secret.

Sims had twisted around, startled. "M," the younger man said, nervousness palpable. Q stifled a snort, unimpressed by how easily the new agent had shown fear.

"Agent Sims," James replied in kind, and oh, that low voice would never cease to get to Q. Still, he was here to see a show, so the Quartermaster kept his smile firmly hidden. "We don't have a problem, do we?"

"No," was the too-quick answer. One of Bond's pale brows winged upwards.

Then Sims made a mistake - a mistake far bigger than lying to a man who was still a better spy than he was. Sims crossed his arms in a show of defiance and decided to add, "I just thought that the Quartermaster here seemed bored. No law against having a nice, friendly chat with a coworker, right?"

One of Q's eavesdropping minions whispered, "Oh, now you've done it..."

Q's grin finally slipped loose of his control, and his toes curled in his shoes.

The real dead giveaway for trouble should have been the glint in James' eyes; the crows-feet around them deepened with what looked like understanding, but what Q recognized to be a truly dangerous sense of humor. "A friendly chat, you say?" James repeated musingly. He took a step forward. His hands were in the pockets of his expensive suit (James' taste in fine things like clothes and cars hadn't changed with age in the slightest), so the movement should have been harmless. Sims still stiffened a bit, finding his personal space decreasing. James cocked his head and made a show of being bewildered by the tensing. Q, behind Sims but in 007's - no, not 007 anymore; M's - range of sight, rolled his eyes at the theatrics. ' _Of course you have to play games_ ,' Q thought of his husband with resignation and fondness.

"And I suppose you and I - we're just having a nice, friendly chat as well?" Bond pressed in his most disarming tone, still stepping leisurely closer. Before Sims could pull together anything but half-spoken words, James was all but standing on his toes. Q's heavy worktable pinned Sims in on the other side, and Q's metaphorical ears pricked with interest as he saw what James was doing.

Blue eyes were cool now, like the hearts of glaciers, and there were bare millimeters between him and his subordinate. "Still nice and friendly?" James pressed. When he canted his head, it was the kind of motion seen in hawks, looking down at prey.

Sims stuttered something defensive about how, yes, he had been just nice and friendly, that's what he'd said, but the younger man cut off as M responded by leaning forward. Suddenly James was _way_ too close - bracing a hand on Q's table, in fact, right next to Sims' left hip. Bond's scarred mouth hovered close enough to Sims' that Q considered getting jealous. "I think I understand," James decided, still as calm as a mountain lake, as thoughtful as a stalking tiger. He shifted his weight, and Q was listening closely by now, drinking in every detail with avaricious eyes and ears: he could hear the light rustle of fabric brushing, James being close enough to touch. "If you can be friendly, I suppose I can, too. It seems only fair of me." Sims entire body was by now stiff as a ramrod.

A certain part of Q's anatomy could relate.

All MI6 agents were trained to be cool and collected in a variety of situations that would fluster a normal person - but Sims was young yet, James was by this point _very_ close, and if Q recalled correctly, Sims was also painfully straight and still learning to handle male targets on missions. James had no such compunctions, and also clearly didn't care about the polite distance past Ms had always maintained between themselves and their employees. Both hands moving to the table on either side of Sims, James leaned in, murmuring right up against the agent's ear, "You look uncomfortable, Sims. Do you want me to make you more comfortable?"

Q could hear various techies shifting around in their seats nearby, unabashedly staring at the show Bond was putting on. Even the most scandalized people in the room had to admit that the low purr of Bond's voice right now was going right to their groins.

What Sims stammered wasn't audible, but James' expression was growing less tolerant. The mask of idle seductiveness was being removed. Voice less playful and more stern, James went on, "Or do you want me to ask if my advances are wanted before getting this _friendly_?" Sims' shoulders jerked up around his ears, then he sagged, his body language finally speaking of understanding and perhaps guilt.

Point made, James withdrew from Sims as if he'd never been all over the younger man to begin with. Eyes glacially aloof and not a hair out of place, James looked at Sims squarely while the new agent averted his gaze. "Do we need to talk about this more?" James asked with all the patience of a middle-school teacher who had survived entirely too many parent-teacher conferences to be ruffled by anything now.

"No, sir."

"Good." James finally fixed Q with his gaze instead, recognizing his presence officially to ask, "Quartermaster, do you need this agent for anything?"

Pretty sure that he was smirking, still bent lazily over the table with one hand tracing over a bundle of labeled wires, Q replied, "Not in the slightest."

It was always a bit sexy that James had also learned to take commands as well as give them, as he took Q at his word with a short nod before turning back to Sims. "In that case, you're dismissed."

Sims beat a quick retreat, and all the minions in Q-branch tried to pretend that they hadn't been watching the interaction like a porno. Q didn't have to pretend anything, and simply stayed where he was as James circled the table to come and stand beside him. Q didn't miss the way Bond's eyes ghosted over him. Unlike Sims, though, James didn't need anything but a glance to let Q know that this present posture was making Bond think about fucking his husband over the table. Instead of cheekily asking whether Bond was turned on by disassembled explosives, Q noted, "HR is going to have a field day with you."

"Whyever would they do that?" Bond replied like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He leaned his arse against the table, folding his arms and watching Q with playfulness that belied his years of sobering experience.

"I'm pretty sure that that is exactly what sexual impropriety looks like."

"Funny, because Agent Sims told me that that was called 'friendly chatting'. Surely friendly chatting isn't illegal?"

Q leaned over to nudge Bond with a shoulder. "Say that all you like, but don't come crying to me when HR makes you go through that tutorial again about sexual harassment."

"To be fair, that last time they made me do that, I hadn't been sexually harassing anyone," Bond argued back.

"Hm, oh really?" Q looked up at him with a challenging smile.

Bond met it with a grin that was all innuendo. "Well, I think that you and I were well beyond that point, what with how your trousers were down around your knees, and-"

"Ohhhhh-kay, that's enough," Q straightened immediately to give his husband a little, shooing push. If this went any further, his cheeks would get pink, and his techies would get further distracted, and Q himself would get further distracted... "I've got work to do, and I’m sure you do, too, _M_." He emphasized the important title for effect.

For a moment, James resisted Q's pushing hands, instead leaning into them so that Q couldn't help but feel the retained strength in the older man's chest. "Just answer me one thing," Bond requested, voice falling to a hushed murmur. Then, just as he'd done with Sims, but in a voice that carried tenfold more sex in its pitch and timbre, James leaned close to Q's ear and breathed, "Did it turn you on?"

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always fun to write ficlets where James gets to remind people that he's still got it ;) Hope everyone enjoyed!


	10. Soulmates Never Did Run Smooth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for this prompt: _“When you meet your soulmate, you grow your own unique, fantastical body part (hooves, antlers, feathers, etc.). At that point, no one (including you) can see it. But once you and your soulmate gain a mutual interest, their wondrous quirks become visible to you. You have finally been able to see your [insert peculiarity]. But you don’t know how you got them, because your SM has an incredibly discreet one that you simply have never noticed.”_
> 
> I've tweaked the AU a bit, but hopefully the story explains itself ;)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: soulmates; supernatural elements; angst; body-image issues; emotional hurt-comfort; Q is a sad soft muffin; pining; happy ending
> 
> No hard warnings in this one :) Angst mixed with fluff and sweetness at the end.

Q had always had his heart set on a soulmate. He knew that not everyone got one, but that hope had been what had gotten him through the orphanage - it had been something to hold onto, and even as he moved up in the world, that one desire never really faded away. Even as Q became more of a realist, his brain finding its niche amidst logic and geometrics and numbers, that one fantastical wish had remained, tucked away in quiet but well-kept part of his mind.

 

And fantastical really was the right word: while Q had never seen anything first-hand (and wouldn't until... if... he found a soulmate), he'd done extensive reading on the process, often having to hide his books from the more cynical children at the orphanage. How the process worked was that, the moment someone was within proximity of their soulmate (the term 'proximity' had never been specified, but always meant in at least the same country), they grew something. Horns. A smattering of scales. Wings had been documented. It was always something mythological in nature, and the only bonus seemed to be that it was invisible.

 

To everyone except you and your soulmate. That's how you found them. You looked for the person who might have stepped out of a fairy tale, their inhumanness a sign that they were for you. You never lost the traits, but they remained a sort of secret reminding you that even your most hidden parts were sought after by the person who loved you.

 

It all sounded so lovely. A bedtime story that Q had told himself on lonely nights.

 

Too bad reality was nothing like that.

 

The day Q found out that he had a soulmate, he found out that having a mythological trait could be practically life-ruining, and not at all as fun as he'd expected. It didn't help that he first got his trait in the middle of an inventors' convention and it wasn't a small trait.

 

That was also when Q learned something that the books had sort of glossed over: no one but your soulmate could see your trait, but it could still react tangibly with the world. That meant when Q suddenly grew a tail, he knocked over an entire booth and nearly had a hole ripped in the back of his trousers.

 

The whole experience was traumatizing. Q had never been the kind of person who took up space, and was one of those people who actually sincerely meant it when he said "Beg your pardon" to any stranger he bumped on the street. Therefore, suddenly having a three meter tail whipping out behind him like a new robot he had no remote to was just about the most humiliating thing Q had ever experienced.

 

He ended up fleeing in the chaos before ever checking around him to see if he could see anyone else suddenly sprouting the telltale marks of a soulmate. Instead, while everyone was shouting in confusion and trying to figure out what the hell had just happened, Q curled up in an empty bathroom stall (tail still rippling around him in the confined space, immune to his efforts to control it) and cried.

 

It didn't really get any better with time. Q spent more effort trying to keep his tail from knocking over/hitting/getting stuck in things than he did looking out for his soulmate. It reached the point where his person could have walked right past him sporting a pair of horns and Q would have been too busy getting his tail through a revolving door to notice. It was entirely legal and accepted to tell employers about one's 'soul-trait,' but it was also widely known that many employers only believed what they could see, and therefore tended not to take things seriously unless they themselves had a soultrait. So Q kept quiet. For all intents and purposes, he functioned like a regular young man with no soulmate out there. Keeping the secret became a habit, because he was (he later realized) ashamed.

 

Q's ambitions got derailed for a bit after that. Previously acclaimed for his inventions, he no longer wanted to go out in public to show them off, because his tail remained something of a sentient being, and he hated it when people would jump in shock at just being brushed by something invisible. Q had already been a rather private person before (a side-effect of growing up in various foster homes where you never knew who could be trusted with information), and now became even more reclusive, turning to different facets of his skillset: programming and hacking. He still held a handful of patents on things he'd designed, but he didn't go to conventions anymore - and it was hard to build new things now that he had a tail that liked to coil and whip about at random. So far as he could tell, it was a demon-tail, long and slender... and definitely demonic in Q's opinion. This should have been a dream come true, but it was a nightmare.

 

It was a full year before anything changed, and that was only because he got arrested. Hacking was lucrative, but it also occupied a moral grey area, and when that finally came back to bite Q, he couldn't say that he was entirely surprised. What did surprise him was that MI6 brought him in and offered him a job instead of incarcerating him.

 

Q tried to back out of the position, to tell them that he wasn't fit for the position... but this wasn't the kind of job offer that took 'no' for an answer. Finally, in a fit of panic - wanting nothing more than to go back to his nice, secluded apartment where he'd 'tail-proofed' everything and no one got upset when something got knocked over and broken anyway - Q just told the truth. He had a soul-trait and it was destructive as fuck and he didn't think that he could handle society.

 

The woman interviewing him, a stern, older lady with silver-white hair and eyes like chips of polished grey obsidian, listened in silence until Q was shaking and breathing fast, but his story was done.

 

Then she said with only a sliver more sympathy than before: "After the explosion, MI6 has moved locations, so your branch is now underground. I'm sure you can find privacy aplenty down there - and you're free to design it as you like, _Quartermaster_."

 

It seemed Q's fate was sealed.

 

Q coped as best he could, and if he were being honest with himself, Quartermaster of MI6 was the best job he'd ever had - after he settled down and found that if he wore baggy clothing he could tuck his tail into either his trousers or his shirts. It wasn't comfortable, but it reduced the likelihood of it escaping his control and knocking people over.

 

Perhaps Q's determination to hide and contain his tail was hurting his ability to actually learn to control it, but Q still hadn't come to terms with what a bad hand fate had dealt him. He still wanted a soulmate - desperately - but now, knowing that his soulmate would not only be able to feel this damned tail when it knocked into them, but would be able to _see_ it... Q didn't want to inflict that on anybody. He already felt sorry for anyone who was his soulmate, because this tail of his was nothing like all of the fairy wings or petite horns that people talked about their partners having.

 

Q-branch began to feel like home, hidden deep in the tunnels with lots of space and minimal interactions with the outside world. And since that last MI6 had been blown up, and they worked regularly with dangerous people and things, no one questioned Q's requests to have tables bolted to the floors, or that breakable things be kept locked up and protected whenever possible.

 

Life went on.

 

And sometimes, late at night when everyone else had gone home, Q would stand in the middle of the biggest room and untangle his tail from where he'd wrapped it around his stomach beneath his oversized cardigan. He'd let it uncoil, stretch out, looping back and forth like a snake in search of something to kill.

 

And he'd cry quietly out of loneliness into his hands.

 

When Q first met James Bond, he was nervous. The man had a reputation as a troublemaker to put it mildly, and Q was worried any time he had to deal with a spy - because even if Q's tail was invisible to all but his soulmate, it was still detectable. As he prepared to meet James at the art museum, Q took extra care to hide his tail, because if anyone was going to figure out his humiliating secret, it would be a spy.

 

Q still looked for signs of a soulmate in everyone he saw, even if he wasn't sure what he'd do if he found them. His incredibly unhealthy connection to his own soultrait meant that he was no longer eager to have another person be able to see it - meaning that he almost _didn't_ want to find his soulmate. And there were many accounts of people who never did. They got close to them once, awoke the soultrait, and then never got close enough to find the other person again. Q had a feeling that it would be better that way, but at the same time, the tiny part of him that had never left the orphanage - that still remembered waiting for a home, like a puppy in a pet store window - yearned for a companion. It made him very torn.

 

Therefore, when he entered the art museum and walked over to the bench where Bond was already sitting, Q surreptitiously checked for signs of a visible soultrait while simultaneously hoping he'd see nothing.

 

He sighed out a breath of relief when, even after he'd sat down with the man and talked for a bit, he noticed nothing supernatural about the man besides his almost electrically blue eyes - but he'd been assured that everyone could see those.

 

Of course, once the fear/hope of a soulmate was gotten mostly out of the way, that freed up Q to notice how insanely handsome 007 was. Handsome and _annoying_ , but Q hadn't had a good fuck since Uni, so maybe that was why James' more annoying traits only turned him on more.

 

In very short order, Q realized that James was at once more irritating and more alluring than he'd initially calculated. The man was a tropical storm: he destroyed basically everything and anything, but God did Q love to watch him thunder in. Even when James came back with a story about his gun getting eaten by a Komodo dragon, Q was only half as angry as he made out to be. The rest of him was centered around the way his heartbeat raced, his mouth gone dry with the need to ask James to wreck him like that. But Q hadn't trusted anybody with his body in so long that he didn't even know how to begin now, so instead he pulled on a professional mask and lectured the man. James took the talking-to with a devil-may-care smile and went back out into the field, hunting for whoever was threatening to expose MI6 operatives.

 

Q surreptitiously checked the records to see if James had a registered soulmate, and breathed a guilty sigh of relief when the agent didn't. Not that Q knew what to do with the information, but something about meeting James Bond had reminded Q of how heart-wrenchingly lonely he was. It was as if Q had managed to hold that wound closed, but James had ripped the stitches out just by his presence. It was frustrating and hurtful, but Q still found himself trying to think of ways to maybe be with another man... without his tail getting in the way and drawing attention.

 

Invisible or not, though, Q's tail was something he couldn't figure out how to work around. So even when Q learned of just how easily James slept around with people - friend, enemies, colleagues - Q kept himself to himself in silence. Maybe his nighttime fantasies got a bit more specific, but other than that, life went on as usual.

 

Raoul Silva tried to disrupt all of that normalcy - for everyone. From the moment James brought the madman in to the time when James and M managed to return - barely - everything was a bit of a manic blur. Q was a wreck. He hadn't realized that he worried so much for James' safety until James was asking him to break protocol for him. "So much for my promising career in espionage," Q had mumbled, and then proceeded to encourages James' stupidity with everything he had.

 

Silva was dead for good this time, James was back, M was back, they were both mostly alive, Mallory still had a broken arm, and maybe no one was going to press charges about Q aiding and abetting James' kidnapping of M. It was all just about more than Q could handle all at once, and that was maybe why things went a little haywire that day. Everyone was celebrating and for some reason Q had been coaxed up from the bowels of Q-branch to join the festivities, and he didn't know whether to feel frightened by the crowd or warmed on the inside that people had thought to involve him. Q had kept himself a bit apart from people for so long that he'd honestly started to wonder when Moneypenny would give up on him - but here he was, being included, someone slapping him on the back and another person pushing a cup of something alcoholic into his hand. Q couldn't wipe the silly grin off his face.

 

It didn't matter for the moment that he hadn't actually slept since James had absconded with M - he was happy and enjoying himself, and everyone was being polite enough not to mention that he looked a little bit wrecked. The alcohol helped.

 

And then James, fresh from Medical and only looking a little worse for wear, joined the party. And Q had had just enough alcohol by that point to forget why he would ever hide how ecstatic that made him.

 

He ended up darting across the room, somehow managing to be the first person to reach James and stand in front of him - probably grinning like a fool still, cheeks flushed with alcohol. And then, because at that moment he was happy, and surely that meant he was allowed to be a bit happier, Q braced his hands on James' shoulders and planted a kiss right on the man's surprised mouth.

 

In all honesty, it was a pretty chaste kiss: close lipped, not grabbing, brief. It was full of affection, though, because Q really did mean the kiss - he realized how much he meant it a half-beat later, shock hitting him like a punch to the gut. Suddenly realizing what he was doing, he jerked back, terrified by how much he'd wanted to kiss this man.

 

Because even if Q didn't have his tail to worry about, another thought had struck him: if he had a soulmate out there, what right did he have to go kissing other people? Was it wrong? Because James surely wasn't his soulmate. He'd seen quite a lot of the man, and there wasn't the slightest sign of anything supernatural - no soultrait in sight to show that he was Q's (and Q was his). Did that... did that mean that Q was cheating on his soulmate when he lusted after Bond like this?

 

Horrified at himself and his heart torn two ways, Q sort of stood and stared, meeting James' bewildered eyes and unable to think of what to do next. Everyone else was whooping and hollering, a few wolf-whistled applauding the impromptu show, but Q wanted to disappear.

 

And then things got immeasurably worse when someone came up and grabbing Q boisterously from behind - possibly another agent, because the voice was male and the arms were strong enough to pick Q right up off the floor and twirl him. And somehow, that was all it took for Q's tail to whip free, jarred loose by the movement and by the panic in Q's system.

 

It was pandemonium. Q's tail wasn't all that big, barely as wide in circumference as Q's wrist at its thickest point. It was pretty strong, though, and while it never seemed to listen to Q, it did seem to be responding to his anxiety now, as it whipped free of his trousers and tried to lash people away from him. Nobody could see it, of course, but suddenly at least three people were tipping over with yelps of surprise.

 

Q wriggled loose and fled, everyone's shock at least providing him that easy escape-route he needed. It was like Day 1 with his tail all over again, and the humiliation of it had his lungs feeling too tight for the air he needed. Vision inexplicably blurry despite the fact that he knew he still had his glasses on, Q quit the room like a cat out of a pail of water. He didn't stop until he couldn't hear any voices anymore, and he knew with utter, hollow certainty that he was alone. He was back down in Q-branch again. His safe zone. His place where he hid himself on a daily basis and probably would hide for the rest of his life.

 

It was that thought that had him sliding down the wall to curl his knees up to his chest, letting out a tearing sob that hurt his tight chest. Wrapping his arms around his legs, he ignored his tail, because it didn't matter what it did now anyway. This wasn't even Q's office - just a little side room with nothing in it. Ostensibly, it was for testing delicate projects. In reality, it was probably made for _this_. Nothing to knock over, nothing to break.

 

But something very broken already hunched against the wall.

 

Q flinched and curled himself in tighter as he heard the door open, but he couldn't seem to completely stop the sobs even when he realized he had company. When he tried to contain them, they turned into choking hiccups, which was almost worse. When the intruder spoke and the voice was Bond's, it got even worse, and Q did his level best to implode inwards.

 

"Q? Q, hey, hey - easy, you're all right," the man was hushing him, voice surprisingly gentle despite the fact that he'd been one of the people Q's damned tail had hit, and despite the fact that Q had attack-kissed him, albeit only for a second. James came and knelt in front of him as if none of that had happened, a hand coming to catch one of Q's shoulders when the Quartermaster tried to twist away.

 

All the while Q's tail kept sliding around and twitching, and he could feel when it bumped and brushed against Bond like a badly-behaved dog. "You damned tail," Q couldn't hold back the urge to hiss at it viciously, feeling deeply betrayed. When Bond's other hand came up to brush his hair, Q tried to blindly bat it away. He didn't want to explain what was wrong - even if his comment might have given away some of it.

 

"Q. Q, look at me," James demanded instead of being brushed off, and Q made a wounded noise in return. He didn't want to look at anybody. He didn't even want to look at _himself_. Dodging Q's hand, James' palm came to rest - warm and firm - against Q's head, before unexpectedly carding through his hair in a smooth stroke. It was strangely unhesitant, a very familiar touch from a man that Q really hadn't known all that long. Perhaps that was what got Q to lift his tear-stained face. He inhaled wetly in surprise as the hand on his hair then caressed downwards to cup his cheek.

 

James... looked oddly determined. And as if he were cataloguing Q's features for the first time, and trying to look deeper. "What happened?" he asked gently.

 

Deciding there was nothing for it, Q sucked in a shaky breath and choked back the little sob that tried to come out instead of words. His voice shook in the worst way. "I... I h-have... It's my soultrait, and you can't see it... but... but it's a tail and it's _terrible_." He'd never said this before, and tearing it out of his throat felt like digging out a tumor with his bare hands. Suddenly he had to make _someone_ understand, though. Words wild and desperate, he leaned forward and out of the comforting cradle of Bond's hand to spit out, "All it does is destroy things and get in the way, and... and it's ugly." He'd never said that out loud either. The lump in his throat got harder to swallow. His vision was blurry again, lashes sticking. "It's so ugly that I don't know if I ever want to find my soulmate, because this is what they'll have to deal with. I just knocked over three people - and you - with this bloody mystical appendage, and-!"

 

By now Q was starting to gesture wildly, but that always made his tail act up, too - that's why Q as the Quartermaster was always so controlled. It was easier to keep his tail tucked away and contained if he didn't get excited and coax it into wriggling and lashing. Now it was sweeping back and forth, every leftward stroke sending it knocking against Bond's legs. "That - that _thing_ that you feel, that's me-!" Q cried, trying to infuse apology in his voice. Apology for every time he'd ever made someone's life uncomfortable because of what his fucking tail was doing-

 

Q's entire thought-process derailed as James caught Q's tail in one hand, stilling it. To be fair, James hadn't looked over at it, so maybe he'd caught it by touch and instinct alone - things that all spies had in excess. But he was looking at Q with an intensity that lit fires, and it stole Q's breath away while simultaneously quieting his hammering heart just a little. The very tip of Q's tail gave little tiny flicks, but otherwise stilled.

 

"How about we try this again?" James suggested in a low rumble, and then the one hand still near Q's face circled around to cup his nape, drawing Q forward for a second kiss.

 

It was heavenly. It was like Q could trust his lungs to inflate again and do what they were supposed to - _breathe_. This kiss was ten times better than the quick peck Q had initiated, even before Bond's tongue touched his lips almost politely. Q opened his mouth and let James in without a speck of hesitation, simply elated not to be scorned. He'd... he'd told someone about his tail. And it was _okay_.  

 

Better than okay: James was sucking at his tongue, drawing Q back into his own mouth. Q had had a bit more experience at kissing than fucking, and was more than eager to lean forward now, lapping past Bond's lips and happy to continue in the experience for as long as he was allowed to. James seemed to still be leading him, though, little strokes of his tongue and angles of his mouth having a goal in mind, and... Q sucked in a surprised little gasp as his tongue stroked over something sharp. He drew back from the kiss, puffy (but no longer teary) eyes blinking in surprise and staring instinctively at James' mouth.

 

James had kept his mouth open - just enough so that Q could see the tapered fang when James licked at it. And when James drew back just a little bit more, and _exhaled_ , Q could see the red-gold flames that filled the inside of his mouth.

 

"Holy shit," was all that Q could say, stunned.

 

James sagged in unexpected relief, and his mouth closed to form a smile. James always smiled in a close-lipped way, Q realized now, thinking back. "I take it that means you can see the fire as well as I can see your tail?" James asked, tone unexpectedly jovial, as if he couldn't contain the feeling.

 

"And the fangs!" Q said back, still in shock, and then the rest of Bond's sentence sank in and the boffin's eyes widened behind his glasses. "Wait... You can see my tail?"

 

"Perfectly," James replied with a smooth nod and a pleased look. He was still holding Q's tail, in fact, thumb stroking gently at the suede-textured skin. Q didn't know if it was a conscious decision or just more of his tail doing what it wanted, but the end of the tail had looped around Bond's wrist and forearm.

 

Q looked back up from that to Bond's eyes, searching them desperately and fearfully for any sign of rejection. "And you're not...?" he got out in a shaky whisper. He couldn't finish the sentence.  He suddenly felt like his chest had been cracked open and his heart exposed, still beating.

 

Something in Bond's expression grew soft and maybe even a bit sad. He still had one hand on Q's nape, but now he freed up both hands just to cup Q's cheeks (Q's tail-tip hung on the entire time, and Q tried to tell himself that it wasn't an embodiment of his own possessiveness). "I'm not unhappy in the slightest," James said in that wonderful low voice of his, even as he stroked a thumb gently against the corner of Q's left eye, coaxing it to close - stroking over the lowered lid when it did, the gentleness so infinite that Q found himself gasping. When he had both eyes closed, James kissed the right one, his mouth hot but the fires clearly tucked away. Q had never read about a soultrait so hidden and yet so powerful.  Suddenly he thought about all of the destruction James Bond caused in a whole new light - if the man could breathe invisible (but totally incendiary) fire, then there was no end to the damage he could cause.  Q wondered how many of the fires he'd seen James set had actually only been visible to him this whole time.

 

Q ended up giggling.

 

“What?” James drew back so that they could look at each other again.  He was smirking a crooked smirk, closed-lipped as always, hiding the fangs that only Q could see anyway.  That still hadn’t sunk in: there were pieces of this man only for Q.  No one would ever see them or know about them.  Just Q. 

 

“I was just thinking…”  Q bit his lip, but it couldn’t keep in the wild smile was stretching across his face.  He felt like he’d never stop smiling now that everything was going to be okay.  “...That I felt bad for kissing you, because I was worried what my soulmate would think.”

 

Bond’s chuckle was low and throaty and the loveliest sound Q thought he’d ever heard.  He eased in for another kiss, speaking against Q’s mouth, “I can say with certainty that he wouldn’t mind you kissing me.”  When Q threatened to break down into giggles again, James firmed up his grip, deepening the kiss until they both needed air.  After a moment of happy panting, James spoke again, but in a more sober voice, quiet and sincere, “I’d have kissed you before long anyway, Q.”  He nosed against Q’s temple and exhaled, and it was like being nuzzled by a dragon.  James’ breath smelled like woodsmoke.  “Ever since you came here, you’ve been someone I can turn to.  I think that if you weren’t my soulmate, whoever was would have a fight on their hands.” 

 

At those gentle words, Q found his eyes tearing up again - this time with good feelings.  He nuzzled back against Bond’s face, cheek-to-cheek.  And for once, his tail did what he told it to, tightening around Bond’s arm to show just how much he was _not_ going to let this man go.  Bond must have liked that silent promise, because he released a purring noise against Q’s cheek that sounded like a fire crackling, and pressed sharp teeth ever-so-gently to the lobe of Q’s ear.  

 

So far as declarations of love went, it was unconventional, but it worked for them.  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to be all fluffy and craziness when I first saw the prompt, but somehow it ended up being angst, and I don't know how that happened. But it did. And then I had to give Q the love he deserved!! 
> 
> Plus, making James a dragon is never going to get old to me ;) Neither is giving Q a tail. (If you want to read more James as a dragon, I've got a fic for that; likewise, I've got multiple fics where I gave Q a tail, lol I have my kinks)


	11. Deer Prince Q...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Seelie and Unseelie Courts have always been contentious, but everyone had thought them at peace for a moment - that is, until a group of Summer Fey attack the youngest Winter Prince, forcing him to flee to the human realm. Once there, he finds some unlikely allies...
> 
> or: the story in which I'm not actually making a play on words in the title... ;)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags/Warnings: fey characters, canon-typical violence, some magic and shapeshifting, poor Q definitely gets beat on a bit, happy ending, Alec is a good and scary bro

The Seelie Court's first mistake was in thinking that Q wouldn't run.

 

It had been a massive break in the peace that had stood between Winter and Summer for over a generation, the kind of sudden and targeted violence that was like a puncture right through everything. One moment, both Courts were more or less ignoring one another - the next, the youngest son of the Winter King and Queen was fighting for his life at the hands of dozen Summer fae.

 

Princes - even young ones caught off guard and badly injured - were powerful, however. Fae were long-lived, so while Q was still the most youthful of his mother’s brood, he had a lot of experience and a quick but tempered mind. So, even in the midst of his terror, he saw an escape where others might not have: through the Hither and Yon. The Summer fae had managed to drag their captive into Seelie lands, where they had the home-field advantage, but through the Hither was the human realm - and all the rules changed there.

 

One two legs, Q knew that he was slower, especially the Seelie trees reaching down to grab him while the lush grasses - so strange to a Son of Winter - tangled his feet like a billion tiny hands. The forests here didn't take kindly to strangers, and just as Q was gaining some meagre headway, a willow switch whipped out and tangled with his antlers so suddenly that he nearly toppled over backwards. 'Fuck this,' the prince thought viciously, and ignored his injuries for a moment to call up the magic at his core. Sure, it was inconvenient right now to have antlers, but all of the Unseelie royalty had a bit of animal in them, and they could call it out when the need was dire...

 

Q's scream of pain as his batted body transformed became a stag's rebellious bellow, and with four strong legs beneath him now, he shook himself loose and ran again - into the Hither and Yon. The Hither was arguably more dangerous than even Seelie lands, but Q didn't plan to be there long, only bolting through the silvery mists until he was able to tear himself loose and leap into the human realm. He stumbled, panting, but now he had four legs to keep him upright and keep him going instead of just two.

 

Anyone in the area would have seen a creamy white stag stumble seemingly out of nowhere, strange leaves clinging to its young antlers and streaks of blood vividly drawn down his sides. Disoriented and desperate, Q barely avoided skidding right into a tree, his hooves digging into soft moss and loam as he pivoted away.

 

He could still hear Hounds of the Hunt behind him. He couldn't stop. They'd followed him.

 

The human realm felt strange, the air a different smell, alive and cloying after the draining emptiness of the Hither. With a jolt, Q realized how alone he was now, in more ways than one - before, he'd been away from his Unseelie kith and kin, but not away from the Sidh altogether. Now, though, he was in the world of men, where fey folk did not tread. He'd heard stories of this place, told to him before bed when he was young, horror stories of what happened to bad little Unseelie boys who wandered to the land where monsters at magic like fires destroyed frost...

 

Q heard a bark and twisted mid-bound, sure that the Hounds had caught up with him. Before his fore-hooves had even hit the ground, however, he'd realized that the bark was different - a second before his keen ears snapped forward at a sudden, thunderous cracking noise. Synonymous with the startling sound was a new pain, hotter and harder than all the rest, exploding in his shoulder. It was such a shock that Q's legs betrayed him, and he tripped, long legs flailing as he toppled onto his side. The pain followed him. When he tried to get up, the pain tripled. Breathing raggedly from agony and pure exhaustion, Q didn't try again.

 

Q tried to lift his head up to look at the new wound, but every pull of muscles felt like fire, and he was so tired. His body felt big and heavy, and he could feel his magic slipping - it was like a cloak that he was trying to keep curled around his shoulders, a wind stronger than him trying to tear it away. He keened quietly as he heard another bark, this time from closer, although it still didn't sound like a pack of Seelie Hounds. But then he heard footsteps crunching closer, too, and knew that he had to get up again. Somehow, though, his best efforts only resulted in his hooves tearing up the grass next to him and _fuck_ he couldn't stay transformed like this much longer...

 

Just as the footsteps came up behind him and Q felt a hand grip one of his antlers, he lost his grip and felt his body shudder back into its normal shape. He cried out weakly, but he barely had breath to spare, even as his bare heels replaced hooves in kicking the ground - unfortunately, he still had the antlers, one of them gripped in a tight and unforgiving fist.

 

He also had the cervine ears, though, keen enough to know that it wasn't one of his attackers who muttered from behind and above him, "Bloody. Buggering. Fuck."

 

Q looked up with his last erg of energy, and saw a man with blue eyes and blond hair starting down at him. A dog bounded up to them, barking again, and the last thing that Q saw was the man stroking a lean, grey dog with his free hand - the other twisting a bit, baring Q's neck, arching his head back to get a better look at him.

 

Then Q's strength finally gave out and the world went black.

 

~^~

 

"Fuck," James Bond said, staring down at his bed, which usually only held him and/or Alec, but now held a skinny slip of a thing with antlers and big, deer-like ears. And a helluva lot of injuries that James had just done his best to patch up. When the blue-eyed man dragged a hand down his face, he realized that he smeared blood down his cheek. "Fuck," he repeated for good measure. This was not how he'd expected today's hunting trip with Alec to go. To make matters worse, Alec wasn't back yet, so James was left to deal with this insanity on his own...

 

The boy's - young man's? - clothes had been a lost cause, although James had quietly held the frost-soft weave in his hands for a long time, thoughtful and silent as he fingered patterns that no human could've woven. He'd only barely resisted the urge to likewise stroke the tears and antlers - and likewise the tuft of a tail that he'd seen when he'd removed Q's bloodstained trousers. Most of his attention had been on dealing with wounds that made his blood boil, though, because it took a lot of hatred to carve up a body this way.

 

Now the little deer ("The little dear," James chuckled to himself in hollow humor, rubbing at his eyes as if it might change what he was seeing) was thoroughly stitched and bandaged, and breathing quietly with pale lips slightly parted. God, but he was pale. James just had to hope that some of that paleness was normal, and not all from severe blood loss. "Whoever... Whatever... did this to you had more anger management issues than Alec and I combined," James muttered, more to himself than to his unconscious houseguest, "You're lucky that I'm used to patching people up." Skyfall lodge was far away from any hospital, so if James or Alec got hurt, there weren't many other options. Not that a hospital seemed like a particularly viable option for an antlered individual anyway....

 

Before James could decide what to do next (probably lean outside and yell for Alec to get his arse back here faster), the youth on the bed groaned, eyes squeezing closed and expression scrunching up before letting out a piteous whine. Consciousness was going to be a bitch. James winced in sympathy, but was quick to change his demeanor into something nonthreatening when striking hazel eyes suddenly flashed open, fear all over in them. "Easy! Easy - I'm not going to hurt you," assured hurriedly, even as the poor little deer pushed himself against the headboard, injured limbs barely allowing the movement. He was cut up pretty badly, and at this rate, would undo all of James' mediocre work. "Just take it easy. What's your name?"

 

Instead of taking the question as a gesture of good will, the youth's breathing sped up, ears slicking back against his nest of dark hair - so starkly dark in contrast to the creamy white fur that James remembered. It was still shocking to imagine this kid as an albino deer, but James was forcing his brain to wrap around the idea, even as he backtracked now. "How about this?" he crooned, coming to sit at the very corner of the bed. The youth drew his legs up so they couldn't be reached, wincing. James continued without getting closer, "I'll call you 'Q,' for 'Questions,' because I've got a helluva lot of questions that I don't think you're going to answer." James was good at reading people, and that fact was written all over the kid's scared, distrustful face. His _pretty_ , scared, distrustful face. "You can call me James."

 

The little deer's eyes immediately widened, and he spoke for the first time, "How did you-?" He cut himself off, but not before James had heard his voice, and was smiling in sly triumph at tricking words out of his house-guest. Before Q could finish his sentence, though, or James could continue the conversation, there was barking and scratching at the door.

 

Q recoiled in fright, the momentary bewilderment fleeing in favor of fear. "Shit," James swore to himself again, but managed to move fast enough to keep the deer from vaulting off the bed - or, more likely, tumbling off it, because this deer wouldn't be doing much leaping anytime soon. Even if James' bullet hadn't struck his right shoulder, Q's other limbs weren't in pristine shape right now. The barking continued, and the door rattled, but James just focused on dragging the edges of the blanket up and tangling them around slender, flailing, naked limbs to keep Q from scrambling away. "Bloody hell, would you stop it already?" he grunted, having to wrap his arms around Q even once he had him mostly swaddled, because he was struggling so badly.

 

The were the sound of the door scraping open and claws on the floor, and the barking stopped with one more satisfied woof. While James merely looked over his shoulder to the entrance-way, frowning, Q let out a piercing whimper and buried his face against James' chest. James watched, eyes wide, as frost began to spread across the floor and bedsheets all around them, and his own breath plumed as he swore again.

 

A big dog - a deerhound, ironically - came trotting into the room, although it halted with a wary growl, flattening its ears as it saw the ice. James wasn't shivering yet, but that was only because he was naturally pretty hot-blooded. Even when he had a little snowstorm in his arms. "It's okay, Alec," James intoned as calmly as possible to the dog at the door. Alec huffed in response, apparently not agreeing. James tried his tone on Q to see if he could get better results, "Shhh, take it easy. Whatever's hunting you, that's not it - that's just Alec." Slender fingers were gripping James' shirt-front in a death-grip, antlers nudging James' jaw as Q's face buried close. But the little deers eyes opened. The flick of one ear told James that he was listening. "Alec is actually the reason I didn't kill you - that shot to your shoulder was meant for you heart," James admitted. That, predictably, was not the most comforting thing to say, but when the youth sucked in a sobbing breath, James raised a hand on impulse to stroke back one cupped ear. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," James soothed gently, rocking a bit even as he shivered at the soft texture of short, pale fur.

 

The hoarfrost that had been building up on his shirt melted around Q's fists. Alec swished his tail and dared to pad around the bed to where they were, dark green eyes curious but body still tense.

 

"Q, this is Alec," James said, hoping that the anxiety is past. "He's been... leading your pursuers on a merry chase." For the first time, Q turned his head and looked up at him, nearly scratching James' cheek with a tine as he moved. James, thankfully, was used to dodging all manner of dangerous 'weaponry' in his history, so he didn't hold it against the kid. At Q's questioning look, James shrugged and elaborated, "I gave him as trip of your bloody shirt. So while you've been here, Alec's been all over the fens. No doubt having the time of his life." The last he said wryly, looking over at his canine companion.

 

Alec sat his arse down with a thump, jaws parting in a doggy grin.

 

"N-No, that's..." Q got his voice working, albeit with a stutter, as he stared between James and his dog. It was becoming easier to dodge the delicate tines that rose from his head, although one of Q's ears brushed the man's throat like a silk whisper. "That's not possible. They'd kill-"

 

Q was getting worked up, his shaking swiftly becoming so pronounced that James could feel it against his side, so he interrupted lightly, "Don't underestimate him. He might be a scruffy-looking fellow, but he's got more tricks than most dogs his age." James reached out a hand and scratched under Alec's jaw as he knew he liked; Alec's tail swished back and forth. Q looked less contented with the answer, but allowed James' other arm to hug him close.

 

"You're taking this rather well," Q observed after a moment of quiet, the only sound being the sound of Alec whining as James withdrew his hand.

 

"I've had weirder things happen to me," James deflected mildly.

 

Q raised one brow - the one that didn't presently have a stitch in it. He deadpanned, "You regularly shoot at stags that transform into people?"

 

"Well, usually my aim is better."

 

"You're... very strange."

 

"Says the boy with antlers, a tail, and big, furry ears."

 

Q scowled, then winced and sagged a bit more heavily into James' side. Concerned, James supported him with both hands, glad at least that he wasn't seeing any blood seeping through the burrito of sheets - the stitches must've been holding. "How about we just continue pretending that this is normal until you've at least gotten a bit of sustenance in you. I can put the kettle on - unless you prefer something cold?" There were still a few patches of ice on the floor. Q looked ashamed of himself, and James, heart softening much like the ice was, stroked one big ear back in what he hoped was a soothing gesture. "Don't worry about it, Q. Alec makes bigger messes on the regular."

 

The dog sat down and snorted. It was hard to imagine a dog ever looking more offended.

 

~^~

 

Q was glad that this wasn't a Seelie Hound, but instead the human, James', dog. Unfortunately, Q's defensive reaction had been a bit over the top, and even if James was apparently willing take the supernatural in stride, Q himself was in no state to be throwing frost around. It was embarrassing, how weak he felt, and he curled into as much of a ball as he could when the human laid him down. Q had always heard that humans were big and loud and clumsy, but the gesture was gentle. Q only hurt as much as he'd hurt already. The man left with a gentle touch to his left ear (Q wasn't used to that; even his family didn't touch his ears), and his footsteps when he left the room were surprisingly quiet.

 

Q was left with his pain... and the dog. As a fey, he'd heal very quickly, and he'd registered the bandages and stitches keeping him together until then, but he wasn't sure what to do about the dog. When it jumped up onto the bed, Q hissed at it, ears pinning back.

 

"Alec, if you start a fight, I swear to god I will make you sleep outside," James yelled back as if he had the ability to see through walls. The lanky grey dog made a huffing noise like a sneeze, and pointedly did not get off the bed... but it did at least lie down an appreciable distance from Q's person. Perhaps the bed was big enough for both of them. Q looked away from it, pink-cheeked and embarrassed to have shown such a feral respond to just a mere dog.

 

James returned a short time later, a steaming mug of something in hand. "Fair warning, I put something in this to help with your pain," the man said, and Q wasn't sure whether to be nervous, or to appreciate the forthrightness. Mostly, he was just curious about what was in the mug. When it was lowered within range, Q leaned forward and sniffed at it, ears pricking forward at the complexly delightful aromas that curled up his nose. "Does it pass muster?" James asked, and if Q wasn't mistaken, the man was holding back a chuckle.

 

Instead of answering, Q mumbled, "I've never had a hot drink before."

 

"You do seem to favor cold," James admitted, but otherwise wasn't deterred. "Try it. Just a sip. If you start feeling sick, we'll try something else. You've had cream and honey at least, yes?"

 

There were some humans who still paid homage to the fey with milk and honey, and Q looked up suspiciously from under his eyebrows, suddenly wondering if James was one of those people. The man simply met him with mild, blue eyes that were hiding more than they were showing. Q nonetheless wriggled one arm painfully out of the blankets, and allowed James to help as he tipped the cup up for a sip.

 

It was heaven. The heat felt strange, but Winter Fey weren't actually allergic to warmth - it was more than their bodies were designed to have a massive tolerance (and affinity) for cold. And right now, Q's tolerance for everything was down, so for the first time, he actually felt a bit chilly with the use of his own power. So he found that he kinda liked the hot concoction. Especially the flavors of honey and cream. He hummed and begged another sip.

 

~^~

 

Either Q was exhausted or the tea did help with his pain, because no sooner was the mug drained than the little deer was falling asleep. He was still tangled in blankets, but James dared peel them back a bit. When Alec growled softly from the end of the bed, James gave him a look, muttering, "I'm not peeping for fun, Alec, I'm making sure he's not bleeding out where I can't see." As it turned out, though, Q's stitches had indeed survived his scrambling and struggling, and he was doing as well as could be hoped. He didn't stir throughout the careful exam, and James rewarded that by pulling more blankets up around him. Alec huffed again, long snout on his long legs, as if to comment on the silliness of keeping a Winter Fey warm.

 

Because both James and Alec knew that that was exactly what Q was.

 

The little prince tucked in snugly again, James sat down next to Q's head, watching him with unfathomable blue eyes. He reached out a hand, skimming it across Q's hair between his antlers. Not yet fully grown; just three tines on each. "He's one of her brood," James said solemnly. Alec merely watched. "One of the younger ones. I'd have recognized her eldest. I never expected to have any of them in my house, though." He curled his fist around the base of one antler, and Q whimpered in his sleep, as if sensing the threat. James let go.

 

The Cù-Sith flicked his grey tail. When he parted his jaws, this time words came out: "What do you plan to do with him?"

 

James' hand was still on Q's head, playing with the strands of dark hair where they curled and fell past his antlers. Q sighed and actually snuggled closer to James' hip as the base of his ear was fondled gently.

 

James didn't answer Alec's question because he didn't know.

 

~^~

 

Q was jarred from his nap by the sound of wood splintering. Adrenaline spiked through his system even as he jerked awake, although a hand on his shoulder kept him from getting up. Startled, Q jerked his head around to see the human, James, sitting on the bed next to him, an eerie sort of calm about him. He was looking in the direction of the noise, and when Q followed his gaze, he had a lot harder time staying calm. He tried to stifle a whimper as he recognized the very Seelie fey who had been hunting them... although they were minus their hounds...

 

James' own dog was growling, having moved sometime while Q was resting so that his grey flank was pressed against Q's feet, body-heat seeping through like a comforting touch. Except Q wasn't comforting - he was terrified. Terrified as much for his rescuers as for himself. After meeting his pursuers' hungry gazes for only a split second, Q looked back up to James, beseeching, "Please, you have to run, I'm sorry-!"

 

"Just take it easy, Q," James murmured, still utterly unbothered, as if he didn't see the creatures that had broken into his house. Q did a double-take, ensuring that the Summer fey weren't using a glamour to hide themselves - but no, they were visible. James and his dog could surely see them, and it wasn't like they looked human. All fey had an aura about them, a strangeness, even if they didn't have obvious animal traits like Winters princes did. The colors of them were too stark, too unreal, as if the rest of the world were seen through a fogged lens in comparison.

 

Yet James looked at them with something like boredom, even as he reached without without looking to gently grip one of Q's tines, ensuring he had stayed down. Q shivered, unsure who to be afraid of, until James' let go and stroked his head soothingly.

 

"You brought a human into this, Winterson?" one of the Summer fey sneered, baring pointed teeth. More were bared as the sneer became a grin. "You have doomed him with you."

 

"No, _please-_!" Q's attempt to get up was halted again, James' hand on his good shoulder this time. Only then did Q realize that the man was surprisingly strong. For all that Q was physically much smaller, fey were supposed to be stronger than humans... was Q really that weakened? James held him back as a mother wolf held down a cub. "James," Q nonetheless hissed, needing to impart the danger but not having words to explain all that was going on - the fey, the Courts, the magic, the danger...!

 

But James merely looked at Q for the first time, and his blue eyes glinted with humor instead of fear. "I'm tougher than I look, Q. Let Alec and me handle this, all right?"

 

The Summer fey, of course, heard this - their ears were keen - but as soon as they started laughing, Alec stood up, and his body began to grow…

 

Alec had already been a pretty big dog, lean and shaggy. Now, though, his proportions were doubling, his body thickening with muscle as his pelt darkened and took on a greenish tint like old moss amidst the fur. At the same time, James stood, and Q felt the uncoiling of power like a snap in the air - a popping of the ears. Suddenly the tawny coloration of Bond's hair was like beaten gold, like summer wheat, his eyes like cloudless summer skies.

 

The attacking Summer fey hadn't bothered to wear a glamour, but it wouldn't have mattered: James was fey, too, and he'd have seen right through it. Compared to his own glamour - so undetectable that Q could only stare, stunned that he hadn't noticed - any other magic paled.

 

The Cù-Sìth jumped down off the bed, and Q heard his attackers whispering about their lost Summer Hounds. Q could well imagine what had happened to them now - Alec's gaping grin held entirely too many teeth. And James... _fuck_... Q looked at him and realized with horrifying clarity that he'd been rescued by a Summer fey of considerable strength.

 

And it looked like the other Summer fey recognized him. Shock and fear mingled on their features as they backed up. There was a brightness and a hotness in the room, the floorboards starting to steam where Q had called up ice earlier.

 

"Now, last I heard," James said mildly, but now there was an echo in his words, like a midsummer storm thundering in the distance, "there was a peace pact between Summer and Winter, and if I'm not mistaken-" He glanced back over his shoulder, surprising Q with a smile as playful as a spring breeze - the wicked kind that kicked up ladies’ skirts. It nearly distracted him from James finishing, "-This is Winter Prince Q here. My, my..." He turned back to his terrified kith, clicking his tongue while Alec continued to growl. "...If you've attacked the baby of the family, I can only imagine the anger of his mother. If I remember correctly, she dotes on this one most of all."

 

The Summer fey fled. It was that simple. They looked for a moment that they were going to talk to or reason with him, but then something fiery and sun-bright began to coalesce near James' right hand, and it became suddenly very clear that this was not an ally.

 

As the enemy fey cleared out, Q coughed politely into his fist, saying when both James and Alec turned to him, "You should... probably go after them."

 

"A bit bloodthirsty, aren't we?" James asked, but he didn't seem offended. If anything, he looked impressed, which was odd - Q was Unseelie, calling for James to chase down his kin.

 

Q quickly shook his head, fisting his hands in the blankets and explaining tensely, "No, just practical." He dropped his eyes. "If they're anything like my people, they'll be back. So long as I'm here." Q wanted to curl his body up, but everything was started to hurt again now that the adrenalin an the tea was wearing off.

 

An unfamiliar voice said, "I could use a bit of hunting. Stretch my legs." Q looked up to realize that it was the Cù-Sìth, his voice low and male and surprisingly jovial despite the topic. When Q blinked owlishly at the beast, Alec just grinned with all of his ivory teeth. He was big enough that his tail whisked against James' leg as he turned, and he barely fit out the door.

 

Leaving Q with just James, glamour stripped away to reveal yet another Summer fey. Despite the discomfort, Q drew his knees up, tail uncomfortably pressed against his buttocks. "So... you knew who I was this whole time," he started, voice a bit shaky as he felt out the situation. He could tell in an instant that he was in no way strong enough right now to combat the magical power that was pouring of James now.

 

Fortunately, the blue-eyed fey didn't seem interested in pressing the advantage. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and rolled one shoulder. "I suspected. I've only heard of you, but back in the day, I met some of your older brothers."

 

"Who _are_ you?"

 

James' grin was as mischievous as a pucks, but he said, "Let's just say that if I'd been better behaved, and if our families got along better, you and I would have met at social functions. As equals."

 

Q just stared and blinked. "Fuck," he said eloquently. He'd been rescued by a Summer prince.

 

~^~

 

"If you're a Summer prince, how come you're…? Well..." Q floundered, ten minutes later, as he and James were talking. They were in the kitchen now, and James was making that drink called 'tea' again. Q was still bundled up in a cocoon of sheets, trying to decide what he thought of the heat James radiated. When they'd both realized that they needed to sit down and have a calm, logical talk, and James had recommended they move to the kitchen, the Summer prince had carried him. Q had been painfully embarrassed to realize that he couldn't stand without his legs folding up like a newborn fawn, but now he was sort of glad - because he was sure that none of his kin could boast that they'd been swept up in the arms of a Seelie prince. Q had grown up in a place of cold, his body accustomed to it, but he hadn't found James' sunny heat unpleasant.

 

James was finishing his sentence even as he did something with a kettle, "You mean, how come I'm in the human realm, masquerading as a mortal man?" He chuckled. Q perked up at the table as he saw James remove a pitcher of cream from a tall, white, boxy contraption that radiating wintry coldness when opened. And shut it off when closed. Q frowned. "It's a bit of a long story, and probably hinges on the fact that I'm a terrible prince."

 

Q watched James' back, powerful muscles moving beneath a simple shirt, as the man continued to make tea. He decided, "I'd like to hear it." When James pause and froze, back still to the younger prince, Q pressed gently, "I'm not exactly in a condition to go anywhere, so I've got time for a story, if you want to tell it." Q's ears flicked forward alertly as James drummed the fingers of one hand on the countertop, clearly thinking.

 

After a beat, though, he saw the man's blond head nod. "Good point. While I imagine your family is worried sick about you, I'd rather you stay put for a bit. May as well keep you entertained while you're my guest." Now the man was grabbing honey, and Q felt his mouth water a bit.

 

"You'd be surprised how hard it is for a prince to get into trouble," James started his story.

 

Q giggled, then clutched his damaged ribs. When James looked back with concern, Q managed a smile and a playful, "Oh, I have some idea."

 

James immediately flashed a grin. "Cheeky minx," Q thought he heard the other fey mutter as he turned back to what he was doing. "You're probably a right menace when you're at home, being the baby of the family." Before Q could confirm or deny that, James got back to his story, "Cù-Sìth like Alec, on the other hand, don't have the same protection. So when one of my sisters decided to make sport of Alec-"

 

Q, who was used to cold, shivered at the frostbitten tone that James' voice had taken on. Ears swiveling back, Q made note to never harm Alec.

 

"-It was Alec who paid the price when said sister came home mauled. Here's where I should note that I don't like all of my siblings." James' tone had lightened just a bit, even if it still held a brutal edge as he turned around with two mugs of tea in his hands. Eyes hooded and expression no doubt purposefully smoothed over, James approached and handed Q his mug before continuing, "My father was eager to see Alec destroyed for what he'd done in self-defense. My mother knew that Alec and I were close, however, but instead of clearing his name, she simply called for his banishment." James sat down in the chair next to Q, and nursed his mug idly in big, scarred hands. His expression was almost serene as he finished, "So I banished myself with him."

 

Q had snaked his arms out of his blanket-shroud, his hands freezing just short of the mug as he stared. "And they let you?" he asked, shocked.

 

James' smile was the kind that held fire between the teeth. "No," was all he said. Q looked again at the scars on the man's hands... the few he could see on his arms... probably more hidden... all of this on a powerful fey who, if he was at all like Q, could heal all but the most grievous wounds. James lifted his mug and sipped delicately, repeating in a thoughtful tone, "No, they did not."

 

Q was left sitting, very stunned and also unexpectedly impressed, staring at a Summer Prince who had defected from his own Court without the approval of his parents and rulers. No wonder the man had scars. Q tried to imagine tangling with his mother, and the thought made him shudder. He could barely imagine James, defying the wishes of his Seelie King and Queen, his father and mother. Of that, that also explained why Q's attackers had fled so quickly. James was clearly a force to be reckoned with - not to mention a face that they had to recognize. Which made Q wonder... "Does this mean your people know where you are now? Were you and Alec hiding?" he asked, troubled.

 

James was sipping at his tea, but now he made a face and nodded. Q felt guilt constrict his chest. "I"m sorry. That's my fault. I didn't mean to lead them to you."

 

"It's all right," James waved him off. "If you were anyone else, I'd think that you were purposefully searching me out to drag me home, but since you're not even from my own Court, well..." He shrugged, and flashed a lopsided smirk. "It hardly seems fair to blame you for anything."

 

"What will you do now?" Q took a mouthful of his own tea, slowly starting to enjoy the heat of it - and most certainly enjoying the honey and cream undertones, beneath other, more elusive flavors. It was a balm to his nerves.

 

"Well, even if Alec manages to eat all of your pursuers, someone's going to notice they've gone missing, and it's not impossible to then retrace their steps here," James mused, rubbing at his chin while Q tried and failed not to imagine the big Cù-Sìth snacking on Summer fey. "I won't really know until Alec gets back. Until then, I suppose I have no choice but to drink tea, and flirt with danger." The smirk was broader.

 

Q was confused. "I beg your pardon? What danger?"

 

"Why, Q, our people's hate each other, remember? So," James said, even if his playful tone indicated no particular danger, "by definition, if I flirt with you, I'm engaging in some very risky behavior."

 

Q flushed bright pink as he suddenly realized what James was getting at. He hid it behind his mug, taking another, longer swallow, while wickedly amused blue eyes watched him.

 

~^~

 

James was indeed a shameless flirt, and despite his aches and general discomfort (and the fact that he was dressed in nothing but a bedsheet) Q found himself shyly reciprocating. Mother would be having an aneurysm right now if she knew that he was chatting with a royal of the Seelie court, and that their chatting somehow managed to include increasingly obvious innuendos. James was mostly to blame for those, although Q returned out or two - growing bolder as he saw how well his more cutting remarks were received. Unlike Q's elder siblings, James seemed to delight in the sharper side of Q's tongue, only grinning more broadly when he was berated. "Are you a masochist?" Q asked with a disbelieving chuckle, after a particularly sharp exchange in which James drew Q out with teasing comments until Q bit back something xyresically witty. And James, upon being put in his place, merely sat back with his eyes dancing and his smile wide.

 

Q's question hadn't really been serious, but James just leaned forward with his chin on one curled fist, elbow on the table, and his expression reminding Q unerringly of a Cheshire cat. "Maybe I am - do you want to find out?" the man asked back in a low, purring rumble. For a split second, Q actually wished he weren't injured, so that he could do something about the way his heart had just flipped and the muscles of his lower stomach had just tightened.

 

Saving Q from the embarrassing boner that would have probably come next, there was a rumbling _whuff_ from the door - which was still very much off its hinges, allowing Alec to come trotting back in. Q, craning his neck to see, at first thought he glimpsed redness smeared all over the Cù-Sìth's jaws and throat. But then Alec was shrinking again, his glamour shrouding him tightly so that a perfectly normal, un-bloodied deerhound trotted up to the table. "So?" James asked, sitting back in an elegant slouch that drew Q's eyes to the powerful lines of his chest and belly beneath his shirt.

 

Alec grimaced. Q was unsure how he was able to recognize the expression so easily, stretched as it was across a long, canine snout. "Bad news, Jamesy," the dog spoke, "One of those spineless bastards ran on ahead while I was..." One green eye rolled Q's way, and he got the sense that what came next was edited, "... _dealing with_ the his companions. I lost him in the Hither and Yon."

 

Bond swore quietly, but also reached out a hand to give the Cù-Sìth's shoulder a strong pat - a gesture that seemed fitting both for a dog and a person. Q was still trying to swallow the fact that Alec had called the Summer Prince 'Jamesy'.

 

"Looks like we'll be heading home," James murmured, exchanging a loaded glance with Alec that Q couldn't decipher, although he could see the grim lines bracketing James' mouth.

 

"I'm sorry," Q said.

 

Two sets of eyes turned to him, and James' blue ones immediately lightened with a flicker of levity. "For what? Getting attacked? Come on, Q, if anything, I should be the one apologizing - I'm the one who put a bullet through your shoulder."

 

The Cù-Sìth sat down with a quiet huff, muttering past gleaming canines, "And yet no one thanks the selfless dog for preventing such a fate."

 

Q had been quite nervous of Alec to start with, because Cù-Sìth were not only rare, but very dangerous, even to a powerful, healthy fey. In Q's present condition, he could easily become a snack, as he suspected his attackers already had. Now, though, listening to Alec's mock-wounded voice, the Winter prince found himself smiling, and he reached forward with a hand to gently rub the one ear he could reach. Alec immediately leaned closer, eyes closing while his deep chest filled with a pleased noise. "Well," Alec said, seemingly mollified, "at least someone appreciates the political incident I averted." Q, who dealt with Cait-Sìth more than Cù-Sìth, just smiled, relieved that his gesture had been well received. James was watching them both with curious amusement on his face.

 

After a moment, though, Q looked up and elaborated on his initial statement, "I really am sorry, though, that you have to go back. I realize that that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't run into me."

 

"You'd also be dead if Alec and I hadn't run into you."

 

"True." Awkward silence followed, until James stood and said abruptly, "Well, if I'm going to head back into the metaphorical lions' den, I want to do it on a full stomach. Q, do you eat meat?"

 

Q was impressed that James would ask. Every Winter royal, with their animal blood, was different. "I'd prefer not to," he said as diplomatically as possible. He tucked his arm back into his bedsheet so that he was covered to the neck again, but Alec simply took that as an excuse to come and lean up against Q's leg. When Q hissed, an injury throbbing, the Cù-Sìth was quick to shift his weight against the chair.

 

James was already moving around the kitchen, declaring, "Pasta it is then. And afterwards, I'm taking you home, Q."

 

" _We_ are taking the little prince home," Alec amended, eyes on James, stubbornly unblinking even as James turned to frown at him. There was a battle of wills there, all unspoken.

 

Finally, James' shoulders sagged, and while he looked a bit worried and sad that his friend would be returning with him, he also looked the teensiest bit relieved.

 

~^~

 

'Pasta and tomato sauce' was something of an experience. Q was quickly realizing that James had learned an awful lot about human food that Q himself did not know - but the results were quite tasty. And messy. The real embarrassment, though, came not when James laughed at him but when Alec boldly leaned up to lick the red sauce from Q's face. With only one arm out of the blanket at the moment, and said limb occupied with a forkful of noodles, Q had little means of defense as the deerhound make quick work of cleaning his face and very nearly his ears, too. Eventually, Q ducked his head to physically fend the Cù-Sìth off with his antlers, but by then the Winter Prince was quite well licked. Alec fell back with a contented look on his snout - back to his own plate, which was by no means empty. "Alec thinks that other people's food tastes better," James explained with a crooked smirk. Q flushed, because James' eyes on him clearly said that he also thought of meals other than what was on his plate.

 

Alec snorted, already back to eating. He spoke after wolfing down a mouthful, "I don't know what you're talking about. I was merely concerned with sending back a respectable Winter Prince instead of a dirty one."

 

While Q glared at the Cù-Sìth, James answered, "Actually, Alec's got a point. Bringing you back in a bedsheet might send the wrong message." His own plate mostly emptied already, James pushed to his feet, "I think I might have some things that fit you. Have you eaten enough?" When Q nodded, bemused, James stepped forward with surprisingly little hesitancy to scoop him up.

 

By now, Q was already beginning to recover - the benefits of being a fey prince - so perhaps he could have walked on his own. Before he could consider the option, however, he was watching the rooms move past from the cradle of James' arms. For a moment, Q opened his mouth to protest... then closed it, deciding that this was really rather comfortable. He even kept his head angled so that he didn't take one of James' eyes out with an antler.

 

When James angled his own head to lightly buff his cheek against a tine, Q felt a pleasantly surprised shiver go down his spine.

 

~^~

 

Supernatural healing was great, but it wasn't perfect, so Q found himself struggling with getting dressed even after he was set down on the bed and handed clothing. With Q's antlers, any kind of shirt meant to be pulled over his head was a bit impractical, but even as Q shed the bedsheet that he'd been wrapped in, he found his torn skin protesting. "Sorry," Q gasped out as he had to stop moving just to pant. "It just hurts."

 

James, standing in front of him with a human article of clothing that had what looked like little pebbles down the front - buttons? - looked sympathetic rather than impatient. "I'd be surprised if you didn't," he replied candidly, "You're cut up all to hell, and getting shot isn't all that fun either - believe me, I know." Shirt in one hand, James reached out with the other to just barely brush his fingertips along the crest of Q's shoulder, just at the edge of the bandages around the bullet-wound. He was frowning, eyes a shade darker and trouble-looking. "I feel like I should apologize more for that," he murmured. Then, unexpectedly, his mouth quirked upwards in an increasingly familiar smirk. He added in a far more wicked tone, "Of course, most of my best apologies would probably open up a few wounds, and make us late in returning you home."

 

A bit befuddled, Q just stared up at the Summer Prince, ears swiveling around uncertainly. "I beg your pardon?"

 

"I was making a reference to sex, Q. Very good apology sex."

 

Both of Q's ears flicked forward and his eyes widened. "Oh." James was so very, very, very _not_ what he would have expected from a prince of the Seelie Court.

 

James seemed to find something he liked in Q's stunned expression, because his smile became warmer, crows'-feet appearing around his summer-sky-blue eyes. "Come on," he coaxed, mercifully toning down the innuendo just a bit, "Since there's no point in me seducing the clothes off you, let’s see if I can get some clothes _on_ you instead, hm?" He helped Q maneuver an arm into a sleeve, the material different from what Q was used to, but not unpleasant. Definitely not unpleasant was the gentle touch of James' hands, clearly strong enough to injure but exhibiting perfect control over that strength, as he carefully gripped and moved the injured fey in front of him. Q was sitting at the edge of the bed, and found that he liked the steady heat of James' legs where they touched his knees.

 

Perhaps that was what prompted Q to clear his throat and speak, even as James helped him to his feet to start pulling a garment up Q's legs. "I know that... well, that our families don't tend to get along," he started haltingly, hands on James' shoulders and eyes on the back of the man's head as James bent down to ease the material over a bandage on Q's thigh. Q flexed his hands against the warm, moving muscles that he could feel, trying to be as surreptitious about it as he could. When he wasn't called out on his extra touching, that emboldened him to finish his thought, "But I wouldn't be entirely opposed to meeting up with you again. After all of this, I mean. You seem a decent fellow."

 

James chuckled as he straightened, but when he eyes met Q's, they were cautiously interested - and a bit surprised, as if he hadn't expected this from Q. "You're assuming your parents don't kill me on sight, or at least start a war on your behalf," he commented with a hefty dose of gallows' humor.

 

If Q's hands had stayed on James' arms, it was because he wasn't entirely steady on his feet and needed the support to keep his balance. "Let me handle them," he said fiercely, firmly. Being the baby of the family meant that he was often coddled more than he liked, true, but it also meant that he had a lot of sway with his parents - and he was determined to make it clear that James (and Alec) were saviors, not villains, in this tale.

 

James was doing something with the front of Q's trousers, fastening them around the Winter Fey's slim hips with a little zip and a snap. James' thumb lingered, though, brushing against the blush of a vein as it traced along a pelvic bone. "Hmm, when you put it that way..." he said in mock consideration, still glancing over Q's face as if more and more surprised by everything he found there - pleasantly surprised, if his smile was anything to go by. When he flashed a smile, though, it was crooked and a bit evil, "If you can manage that, then I guarantee my family will be shitting themselves with the realization that their outcast son is the closest thing they have to a diplomatic envoy."

 

"Why is that so surprising?"

 

"Q, I'm the troublemaking type - not the diplomatic type. I have lovers and I have enemies, and if you ask anyone who knows me, that's pretty much it. And Alec, but he's an exception."

 

"And what does that make me?" Q dared to ask. Behind him, he short tail gave an anticipatory quiver where it now protruded above the waistband of his new trousers.

 

The smile he got in return looked small, at first examination, until you realized that most of the look lived in James' eyes. "Not an enemy, I think," James murmured very quietly.

 

~^~

 

Walking through the Hither and Yon always felt strange, like stepping into a place that not only had rarified air, but felt like it was breathing all around you at the same time. Stranger still, though, was breaking free of the Hither and back into Q's home realm, but not feeling the immediate blast of familiar cold - because the person carrying him was radiating enough heat to beat back the chill. It was a novel sensation, one that Q wasn't entirely opposed to. He wondered how much of a scandal it would cause if the youngest Winter Prince indicated that her perhaps like a bit of heat in his life...

 

Strong magic prevented one from exiting the Hither right into the heart of the winter realm, but Q had the metaphorical 'keys,' so to speak, and James and Alec had agreed that it would be counterproductive to arrive far away and have to fight their way to the front door. Even if Q had the patience to constantly explain to everyone that he was being carried by choice and not by force (well, and a little bit by necessity, since so much of his body still needed time to heal), it would waste time.

 

"Besides, I'd rather like to see the shock on my siblings' faces when I arrive like this," Q had commented once James had picked him up and prepared to open a rift into the Hither.

 

Alec, at their side with his tail wagging in anticipation, had snorted and bared a few teeth in what Q recognized as a smile. "Do you make a habit of shocking your family members like this, little prince?" the Cù-Sìth had teased.

 

"Actually, I'm usually the boring and well-behaved one."

 

The nudging of James' face against Q's left antler might have been accidental, but Q still didn't think that it was. When James had chuckled, Q felt it reverberate right into his chest, like a shared sound. "I somehow find that very, very hard to believe," the man had commented, and then led the way out of the human realm and back into a world that he and Alec had departed from long ago.

 

What followed, when they reappeared right in the center of the throne room, was unadulterated chaos.

 

Every Unseelie head turned instantly, sensing the foreign Seelie amongst them as easily as one might sense the very sun in the sky - and James was a very bright sun indeed. Even dressed in human clothing, he radiated power as only a royal could, and that power had only grown when he'd returned to fey lands. Q actually quivered at the feeling of magic rippling all around him, the thrill of it being so close making his heart skip a beat even as he turned and stared at James' face, ears cupping forward in rapt interest. It was like seeing James rip off his glamor for the first time all over again, hair like gold, eyes like sapphire flames. Embarrassingly, Q was so awestruck that he missed the cacophonous yelling in the room - thankfully, though, Alec was on it. When someone threw a spear of pure ice across the room, the Cù-Sìth spun around and with a roar... transformed into something with two legs instead of four. Q knew that both Cù-Sìth and Cait-Sìth were quite capable shapeshifters, but he'd only seen Alec as a dog before - now, he saw him as a human, dressed in what James had called 'jeans' and a thick, black jacket that looked a lot like tanned skin. He deflected the spear with his bare hand, a slap that was almost contemptuous, and gave everyone a pretty good idea of just what kind of powerful company James kept.

 

That snapped Q to attention, and he finally shouted for order, his voice ringing out above the rest. Things got a bit less chaotic then, and once it became clear that no one else was going to start throwing magic or weaponry, James let Q down. Once the youngest winter prince was on his own two feet again, tucking an errant strand of hair back behind one tine, everyone relaxed a fraction more. The silence was still tense and rife with dangerous possibilities, but it the reasons for attacking were dwindling.

 

James dared to lean forward and whisper into one cervine ear, "Your mother doesn't look at terribly pleased with me."

 

Alec, standing at James' back like a man used to the position, murmured back with a grin almost as toothy as his canine one, "Has any mother ever looked pleased when their children have brought you home?"

 

It was reflex for Q to reach back and swat at the body nearest to him, and everyone gaped in shock at the easy gesture. Even Q was a bit surprised with himself, although both Summer Fey responded by obediently quieting down. Even by fey standards... it was all very, very surreal. Before anyone could decide that surreal was a bad thing, Q cleared his throat and took a small step forward, knowing that he had a fucking lot of explaining to do. He started, lamely but sincerely, with, "I'm home! But it's a bit of a long story..."

 

~^~

 

Q's return in the arms of a Summer Prince caused something of a scandal to say the least - but at least that scandal was balanced out by James and Alec's scandal, because it didn't take long before word also got out that James was something of a 'long lost' prince (although no one seemed able to say for certain if he was 'lost' or 'disgraced' or 'banished'). Q was grateful for the way this took some of the attention off him, even as he did his best to manage the Winter vs Summer animosity that constantly threatened to put James and Alec in danger. Considering the strength James and Alec possessed, of course, the danger would be mutual, but Q proved his worth by preventing more than one miniature war betwixt them all.

 

After the whole story got out, fortunately, and James and Alec had been interrogated in the most diplomatic way possible to ensure that they didn't have any conveniently hidden truths hidden between their teeth (fey couldn't lie, but truths could be surprisingly tricky in the mouths of a pro), both the Winter King and Queen gave their word that no harm would come to their son's rescuers. As quickly as that, James and Alec became impromptu diplomats... or something close to it that no one quite had a label for.

 

"Your family is probably going to hear about this soon," Q whispered apologetically as he led James and Alec out of the throne room. Really, all he wanted to do at this point was collapse (he was already missing James' bed... and James' tea), but it was a show of respect between their peoples and a show of trust for Q to accompany his new guests out of the limelight. By his mother's looks, Q was expected to go straight to a healer just as soon as they were all out of the public eye.

 

James was walking close at Q's side but one step back, and Q got the distinct impression that the Seelie prince was waiting to catch him if he stumbled. That was proven barely a heartbeat later, as one of Q's injuries twinged. The strong, scarred hand that caught Q's elbow was surprisingly subtle, and when Q glanced around, he dared say that no one had even noticed the little slip. Except maybe Alec, who was another few steps back, wearing a knowing sort of smile as he looked to where the two princes were touching. Q's ears swiveled back against his head in unexpected embarrassment, and he looked forward again to keep walking. "What do you think they'll do when they realize you're back?" he asked James to keep them focused on the conversation rather than how much Q's skin turned warm under James' touch.

 

"They'll probably lose their ever-loving minds," James said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He didn't seem unduly bothered by the prospect. "I'm basically a diplomatic nightmare in a bottle."

 

"This'll be even worse than when your mother found out that your best friend was a dog," Alec said. Calling himself a 'dog' did something of a disservice to his species, although he said it with such wicked mirth in his voice that you'd think he was talking about a party rather than what was basically a racial bias amongst fey.

 

Alec and James exchanged a look that said they were secretly (or not so secretly) elated by the prospect of another political fiasco. Q suddenly wondered what kind of people he'd gotten tangled up with. Despite that, though, he didn't wriggle away when James transferred his hand from Q's elbow to his back, so that it looked less like Q needed the support and more like James was just being a princely gentleman. The heat of his hand was like a kiss of fire to Q's spine, and he shivered, his mind telling him to be afraid but his heart doing an excited little flip instead. ' _I am literally playing with fire,_ ' he realized, and had to swallow down a tiny, manic giggle. He coughed into his hand instead, and continued to lead the way forward. Ice melted around them.

 

Q wasn't entirely sure what this future held, with him and James and Alec, but one thing was for certain: the Courts were never going to be the same after this.

 

~ Prologue ~

 

Running through the Hither and Yon still felt weird, but bursting out into the human realm was decidedly more fun when Q didn’t have injuries or enemies pursuing him.  This time, the only discomfort he felt was the natural burn of worked muscles as he finally escaped his benevolent hunter, Alec, the Cù-Sith not expecting Q to use the Hither in their game of tag.  In his cervine form, Q tossed his antlers, watching as his breath plumed from his nostrils, mingling with a Scottish morning fog. 

“You know, you really should be more careful,” a familiar voice drifted out of that fog, not far off and coming closer.  “Just about every hunter I know would just love a white pelt like yours, even if your rack isn’t much to write home about.”  James Bond, rifle strung at ease in the crook of one arm, stepped out of the fog, tendrils of it wisping off his broad shoulders.  Nothing could hide his cheeky smile.

Q let his transformation roll through his bones, going from a white stag to a person so that he could smirk back and retort, “Oh, and I imagine you’re the expert on racks.”

Smile broadening, James sauntered closer until he could brush a gloved hand along Q’s jaw, grazing pale skin until he could stroke the deer ears that Q kept even in this form.  “Well, most of my trophies have had racks,” he admitted, even a the Winter Prince’s eyes fluttered closed at the attention to his ear, and the heat pouring off James’ body even in the cool morning and through so much clothing.  The man hardly needed the jacket he wore.  “Although I have to admit, some of my most rewarding encounters haven’t.”  When Q chuckled knowingly at that, the estranged Summer Prince leaned in the last few inches necessary for a kiss, a touching of lips that quickly became hungry.  Q angled his head carefully so as not to poke the other fey with his antlers, humming appreciatively when James’ tongue sought entrance to his mouth. 

When they broke for air, James’ sky-blue eyes were dilated and dark, his voice a few pitches lower as he stated candidly, “God, I’m glad I missed that shot.”  

Q lifted a hand to rub at his shoulder, where the bullet wound James was referring to was now totally healed.  Thanks to magic, there wasn’t even a scar.  The memory remained, but it had softened enough that they were able to joke about it.  Q felt like doing something other than joking, however.  He eased forward until his bare toes were pressing down on the tips of James’ boots, tipping his head so that his mouth was just flirting with the idea of touching James’.  “You know, you never did pay me back for shooting me.  Although I’m glad to say that all of my wounds are healed,” he dared to comment.  He was able to keep his voice light, but he couldn’t stop the little flicks of his tail atop his arse, nor the way he kept staring at James’ mouth even before it curved into a wicked smile.  

“Is there something that you’re looking for in particular, for recompense?” James rumbled slyly.  He still had his gun in one arm, but the other rose to run up and down Q’s arm. 

Because Q thought that James was being entirely too smug, he teased back, “Oh, maybe just tea.  I don’t get it at home, you know.”

He could feel it when James tried to hold back his mirth, before bursting out into chuckles.  The laughter was smothered in the form of a kiss to Q’s cheek, James murmuring wryly against the other prince’s skin, “Well, if it’s only _tea_ that you want…!”

“I think I could be convinced of more,” Q murmured, turning his head to snatch James’ mouth in another kiss, before stepping back and transforming.  Four-legged again, Q gave a proud stamp before bounding off in the direction of James’ home - which, unbeknownst to either of their families, had become quite familiar to Q since his first visit.

~^~

Being able to transform into a stag could be fun, but Q had to admit that he liked the games his human body could play even better - for example, it was rather pleasant to be small enough for James to manhandle into bed, bare skin flushed already from hot, Seelie hands.  No sooner was Q sprawled in the bed than James was rising over him, kneeling back to strip off his shirt.  Then the two of them were all over each other again, Q pawing at sun-warm skin and James tangling fingers in his hair, fondling soft ears. 

“This would be… easier…” James said between kisses, “...If you didn’t have to make an excuse to sneak out… every time we wanted to shag.”  

Q gasped and then groaned as James wrapped one strong hand around an antler, effectively holding Q’s head in place so that he could drag his kisses from Q’s slack mouth down to his jawbone and then his throat.  As James tipped Q’s head back and began sucking at the soft skin just under Q’s chin, the Winter Prince dug his fingernails into powerful shoulders and replied breathily, “Well, it’s not like… you can just come… gallivanting into the Winter Court… nor me into your homelands…  Fuck-!”  James had bit down on the spot he’d sucked to sensitivity.  Q somehow managed to continue even as his toes curled against the bedsheets, “It was hard enough to convince my mother that Alec was a neutral party, as a Cù-Sith.”  Strictly speaking, Cù-Sith and Cait-Sith were not purely of Winter or of Summer, although clearly Alec had had a preference for sometime now.  Apparently, Q was definitely something of a Seelie preference himself… but then again, James was damn good in bed. 

“Alec’s going to get insufferable if he has to keep playing matchmaker for us,” James reminded, then placed a softer kiss to the skin that he’d so pleasurably abused.  He twisted his grip on Q’s antler, and although the Winter Prince grunted at the change, he allowed his head to be twisted to the side - James went to work on the bared right side of Q’s neck.  To keep his own hands busy, Q went to work on James’ belt and zip.  James had introduced him to a lot of things since meeting up (human food, tea, something called a _cardigan_ ), but one of Q’s favorite new things still happened to be Bond’s big, hot cock, and he was yearning for it now.  James’ kisses turned into throaty groans against Q’s pulsepoint a beat before James backed off so that he could shuck his pants himself, Q’s fingers more teasing than effective.  Both fey men used the opportunity to divest themselves of their last articles of clothing before tangling themselves together again. 

Although they were now rocking against one another - lazily hungry but in no rush yet - James apparently still had the previous conversation in mind.  He pulled back from a sloppy kiss long enough to comment, “We should start our own court.  Something in between Summer and Winter, you know?”

Unsure if James was joking or not, Q snorted but tried to stifle a full-blown laugh.  “You say that like it’s so easy,” he retorted, and dragged James back in for a kiss.  It was maddening, really, that James had no antlers to grip onto - Q had to make due with weaving his fingers through the man’s short blond hair, or pulling him in by his entirely human ears.  

Q’s own ears flicked as James broke the next kiss just enough to reply, “I can’t imagine it would be that difficult.  Both you and I are royalty, and you’re the favorite of your family.”

“And you’re the bane of yours.”

“Exactly.  Your family would fall over themselves to gift you with a stretch of land - and my family would fall over themselves at the opportunity to get rid of me.  Alec could be our first subject.”

Q snorted, and allowed himself to be kissed again before answering, “You do realize that your Alec is just about the most ungovernable creature in creation?”

“But he _is_ loyal, you have to admit that.”  James rolled his body, rubbing their cocks together in a way that momentarily robbed them both of words.  

Still, Q had words for when he recovered the gift of speech: “Yes, but James, there’s more to running a Court than just that.  I mean - think about the paperwork!”

It was pretty clear that they were both teasing each other now, at least in part.  However, by James’ wicked grin, he hadn’t given up on the argument yet.  He pulled back a bit, resisting Q’s attempts to lean up and capture his mouth in a kiss again, and instead favored Q with a look full of mischief for a moment.  When Q quirked his eyebrows in query, the Summer fey seemed to grow warmer in Q’s hands, magic simmering beneath the skin of him.  “Maybe we could make a deal,” James said, with faux levity that made Q immediately suspicious.  That suspicion wasn’t alleviated as James began to pepper kisses on his chest, feather-light touches of his mouth that moved down from Q’s collarbones to his solar plexus.  “In regards to paperwork, I mean.”  He rubbed his chin affectionately against the lower flair of Q’s ribcage, all without taking his eyes off his Unseelie partner.  Eyes that had darkened a shade. 

“What kind of deal?” Q felt prompted to ask even as he propped himself up on his elbows to watch James better.  

By the tilt of James’ mouth and the glint that lit his summer-sky-blue eyes, he’d been waiting for exactly that question.  “If you do the paperwork-”  Q scoffed, because of course James didn’t want to do paperwork.  He was unprepared for James to finish: “-Then I’ll make myself at home under your desk and suck you off.  How does that sound?”

“That…”  Sounded bloody fucking _hot_.  But Q didn’t get to finish his sentence because James grinned like a Cheshire cat and sunk down between Q’s thighs, doing exactly as he’d suggested: he sealed his lips around Q’s cock and sucked.  Q lost the ability to think, and fell back on the bed with a little keen of surprise and ecstacy, one hand pressing instinctively to his mouth before he remembered that he didn’t have to be quiet here.  The only person who might walk in on them was Alec, and the last time he’d done that, all he’d done was remind James that they needed to go into town to get more whiskey - and then he’d left them to their own devices.  Q could see why James had befriended Alec. 

Q also had to wonder if James and Alec had ever perfected carnal techniques on each other, because James was absolutely unfairly good with his mouth, and he knew his way around another man’s cock in a way that Q still could barely believe.  Making it all the more mind-blowing (no pun intended), though, was the Summer heat of him.  Q wasn’t precisely cold-blooded, but neither was he used to high body tempers, and the inside of James’ mouth felt like a furnace.  Compared to what Q was used to, this was a shock to his system, and it had his back arching and his hips bucking until James pressed his forearms against Q’s inner thighs - spreading him open but also holding him down.  Warm, warm hands gripped Q where thighs met pelvis, calloused thumbs stroking protruding hip-bones while a tongue like a lick of fire found Q’s slit.  It was very nearly too much, and Q fisted his hands into the pillow behind his head to try and ground himself.  When James pulled off with a popping sound and a string of saliva that should not have been sexy but was, Q whined in a manner totally unbefitting a prince.  “So - deal?” James rumbled with more huskiness in his voice than before, an auditory reminder that he’d just had a cock bumping against the back of his throat.  Q just about came right then. 

Q swore a few times and ended up with his fingers pressed against his eyes, but there was no way to remove the sight of James kneeling over his legs, lips reddened and shiny, eyes dark like the heart of a thunderstorm.  Finally Q managed enough coherence to snarl, “We are not talking about starting up a new Court until you’ve paid off your previous debts - or did you forget that you still owed me for that shot to the shoulder?”

Of course, James looked sinfully pleased at having his debt called up.  His grin was broad and crooked.  The thumb of one hand swiped against the base of Q’s cock, making his jump and the rest of Q twitch.  “And just how do you want me to pay that debt, snowling?” he teased, using a nickname that was common for Summer fey to use in regards to Winter fey, but which sounded tenfold more playful on James’ tongue.  

Instead of answering verbally, Q found his eyes flicking down involuntarily to a certain impressive part of James’ anatomy.  Immediately, Bond’s smirk got impossibly more smug.  Voice dropping a few octaves until it was more a growl than a sentence - the low rumble of something predatory in the dark - James leaned over to fish in the bedside table for lube and said, “Oh, I think I know what’ll make my little prince happy.”    

He wasn’t wrong…

There was something princely - no, something _kingly_ \- about James as he knelt up, all muscle and tanned skin between the V of Q’s thighs, slicking up a hand and giving his cock a few pumps before transferring one hand to Q’s upper leg and the over to stroke his arse.  Even before Q’s body was healed up, they’d fooled around… rather a lot… so Q’s body didn’t protest when a finger slid into him.  “Hmm.  I love that you’re so ready for me,” James purred.  He slipped another finger in, enough for Q to feel the stretch this time, tail twitching against the bed.  James’ free hand worked its way beneath Q’s body, and he and Q worked together to get a pillow under Q’s hips - James’ hand splayed there, too, a hot, five-fingered brand at the base of Q’s tail.  James leaned forward then, retracing his trail of kisses now from Q’s navel up to his chest, biting down unexpectedly on a nipple even as he lined up his cock and nudged it against Q’s entrance.  Q keened and then gasped at the dual sensations, reaching up involuntarily to grip James’ head even as his heels at James’ back urged the larger man closer, deeper.

And after just a few shallow pumps - Q’s hole stretching to accommodate, lube a slick squelching where their bodies met - James complied.  They’d done this enough that James sank into him in one smooth, surging thrust.  Q would have archedo right off the bed if he hadn’t been pinned in place by the hands now cupping his ribs, the cock buried in his arse.   _God_ , it was like being lit on fire from the inside, all living heat.  Mouth slack, Q’s body tried and gloriously failed to compute all that he was feeling, his usually cool body physically shocked by the introduction of Seelie heat.  James was a bonfire.  The contrast was just about enough to obliterate Q’s thoughts all together - and that was before James started moving.  Q gripped and clawed at him as James set up a punishing rhythm, the pillow angling Q’s hips just right so that he started seeing stars almost immediately.  

What tipped him over the edge, though, was the hand that reached up past his head and gripped one of his antlers like it had before - a ferocious, commanding grip that let Q know that James was fully capable of taking what he wanted.  Q responded by smiling, acquiescing… and dragging a frost-tipped hand up James’ spine. 

They both came with James gasping against Q’s bared neck in surprise, Q crying out as the pulsing heat inside of him combined with the friction of his cock against Bond’s abdominals to tip him over the edge as well.  Q shuddered his way through the aftershocks well after James released him, allowing Q’s head to loll back into place for more gentle, undemanding kisses, exchanged between slack, panting mouths.  James remembered to roll off his partner before he crushed them, leaving both men panting side-by-side.  

“Deal,” Q gasped, then started laughing as he saw the dazed look in the blue eyes next to him.  “What?  You make a very convincing argument,” Q defended himself, and soon both of them were mingling chuckles, plans dancing in their heads that would upset the very fabric of the fey realm.  Q pondered the fact that sometimes, when you played with fire, you didn’t get burned...

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just can't resist AUs - especially when it means I can make one of our favorite boys just a bit 'deerer' to us all ;) Hope that everyone enjoyed!! This was a particularly fun little ficlet to write, and while I have no intensions of adding to it, you can bet that there will be other fics in which Q (or James) is a bit more than human.
> 
> If you want to read more about these Princes and their shenanigans, go see [tussanus_postea's continuation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15375645). Q and James just might get that Court they're looking for... and so much more. *shoos people off to read the lovely story*


	12. James owns a cat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which James is the one to have a cat, contrary to canon.
> 
> Q does not have a cat. Q has _anxiety_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I always read fics where Q has a cat/cats (which is now supported in canon, so this is hardly surprising), so I got to wondering... hey, what if I switched that around a bit...? ;) I also read a post about "nice things to do for stressed-out people" and decided to just metaphorically give Bond that list. And then give Q anxiety. And thus this fic was born...! 
> 
> Warnings: basically none; references to a tough mission; Q's had a tough day... week... month; James is a softy on the inside; domestic fluff galore; sort of pre-relationship

Very few people would have guessed that James Bond owned a cat, although to be fair, James himself had never planned on owning any pet at all, once he became an MI6 agent.  It wasn’t exactly a job in which you wanted something to depend on you.  When James had found a tiny mop of a kitten somehow stuck on his fire-escape one rainy autumn night, however, screaming her little lungs out, he’d taken her in.  For some reason, he’d kept her instead of calling a shelter, too.  It helped that she’d quieted down as soon as he’d picked her up, and James was grounded from missions until the bullet-wound in his thigh healed up, so he didn’t see any reason that he had to rush the kitten out of his life.  He’d toweled her off and given her a hardboiled egg and left her to bed down on his couch for the night. 

One night became two, became a week, became two weeks, even though James had to go back on a mission (necessitating a chat with the neighbors in which James put on his most harmlessly charming smile and asked if they could check in on his kitten).  He half expected her to run away at some point while the ancient neighbor lady had the door open (James was okay giving the woman the keys to his flat because he could say with some certainty that she’d stopped being physically dangerous about five decades ago), but the feline was there when James came back, seemingly content to be an indoor kitten now.  

Kitten became Cat.  She became an impressively sized thing actually, but still remarkably low maintenance, except perhaps that she prefered table-scraps to actual cat-food, and when James let her out onto the fire-escape in the summer, she sometimes killed birds.  How she lured them into her claws, James didn’t know, but the hunter in him approved, and so she became a constant in his otherwise erratic life.  He never named her anything but Cat, though, because that would mean admitting that he’d truly gone soft.  

~^~

Q didn’t have cats.  

Q had _anxiety_.  

It was probably a natural side-effect of being the youngest Quartermaster in MI6’s history, along with being a natural perfectionist and workaholic all in one go.  It really was a recipe for disaster if he wasn’t careful, but the fact that most of the people he worked with were agents with a deathwish didn’t help.  007 was the worst; the man was basically suicidal, and Q was sure that he’d lost the man on multiple occasions, only to have the infuriating arse turn up again, alive if not always particularly well.  Q didn’t know how the man did it.  Maybe having charm like Bond put you on speaking terms with Death after awhile, or at least let you talk your way out of a permanent resting place six feet under. 

Therefore, it was a shock that one of the hardest missions of Q’s history had nothing to do with the man.  It was actually Moneypenny and 009 out in the field, working together to take down a drug cartel - which turned out to be into human trafficking, and also terrorism on the side.  It took nearly a month to sort out, with the last week being so intense that Q didn’t even go home in that time, and could barely remember eating or sleeping as he worked to keep his people alive.  The complications almost ended with 009 and Eve in body-bags, and Q in a huddled mess on the floor himself.  The mission wasn’t even a success - the only good thing that could be said was that MI6 hadn’t lost two good operatives by the end (009 and Eve were alive).  Q was already beating himself up over it. 

Most embarrassingly, however, when MI6 finally got word that 009 and Eve were on a flight back to London… Q fainted.  Just a _little_ bit.  More of a wobble than a faint, really.  He insisted that he just stood up too fast when everyone else got up and started cheering.  But apparently not one bought that explanation. 

“Go home, Q,” M said, when he found himself in her office.  When exactly had he gotten here…? It was all a bit fuzzy.  “You look like something the cat dragged in - and I mean that in the best way possible.”

Q really didn’t think she did.  He tried to protest, saying that he wasn’t the only one who’d been working on this mission.

“Yes, but you were the only one who didn’t give themselves breaks to rest and eat.”

Okay, she had a point… but, in Q’s defense, everyone else was more replaceable than he was.  If he took breaks, there was no one who could fill in and do his job.  When he said so, M made a sly comment about Q’s humility, which made him frown at her, because all he’d done was state the truth.  

M stared at her Quartermaster a moment longer, until something resigned and maybe understanding softened her eyes.  Then a glint of something almost wicked lit her eyes and she picked up the phone.  “I’m calling in 007.  He’s been hovering around, and I’m sure he knows enough about the situation that he’ll be amenable to giving you a ride home.”

“M, really-!” Q instantly protested, reaching as if to take the phone away but not quite daring to.  He’d rather take food from the mouth of a komodo dragon.  “Even if I needed to go home, I’m quite capable of transporting myse-”  But M was already talking, giving curt orders to 007.  Q flushed red with embarrassment and sagged back in his chair.  It seemed there was no avoiding this.  

The head of MI6 hung up, watching Q with a look that was somehow both placid and triumphant.  “007 will be by in thirty minutes to pick you up.”

The Quartermaster narrowed his eyes ominously, shrewdly noting, “I thought you said he was around?”

“He’s been underfoot for days, ever since getting off his last mission, but at this exact moment, he’s getting into trouble elsewhere,” M replied, undeterred, “In fact, being assigned to you will no doubt keep him from worse mischief.  Now, I recommend you find a spare bed in Medical and do nothing but sleep until 007 arrives.”  When Q once again pulled in a breath to protest, M said, “Before you arrived in my office, I called down to Medical as well.  They’re expecting you, and will want to give you an IV.  According to your underlings, you’re incapable of staying hydrated.”

Oh, Q was _so_ going to fire people when he got back…  Traitors. 

~^~

James took longer than thirty minutes to arrive, but it was all for the best, because perhaps Q had needed the IV.  And the nap.  He hadn’t thought he’d be able to get any sort of shut-eye in a medical bed, especially with a needle in him, but he actually had, and therefore felt marginally more human by the time he followed Bond through the carpark to his vehicle.  The agent had teased him at first, but apparently Q wasn’t as fun a target when his brain was working at only a fraction of its usual capacity.  Q was actually a bit surprised that James laid off on the witty banter after realizing this - he was even more surprised by how companionable the silence felt, even after they got into the car and left without a word.  Either James was better company than Q had previously realized... or else Q’s brain was more addled than he’d previously realized...

James asked a few questions as they drove, questions about how long it had been since Q had been home, what Q planned to eat when he got there.  The answers to that were tricky, since Q couldn’t dredge up much of an answer to either.  He wasn’t even sure he had anything in his pantry that wouldn’t have spoiled…  James just took that in with a hum and a nod; who knew what he made of Q’s living situation.  On the best of days, agents were Gordian knots in human form, and Q wasn’t exactly up to untangling that knot right now.

Then James asked about the mission, with all the verbal dexterity of a man who minced words for a living. Despite Bond’s delicacy, however, Q had a hard time keeping his own feelings in check.  Maybe it was because he was tired, or because this mission had been consuming his life for weeks and was still so fresh, but he just felt so raw still…  He didn’t exactly end up yelling, and he didn’t quite shed tears, but he definitely raised his voice and got a bit more emotional than he’d intended.  That earned him a few surprised, worried glances from his impromptu chauffeur, as if James had suddenly realized he was driving around with a bear in the car - or as if he’d realized that his Quartermaster actually had _feelings_.  If only Q could inspire such surprise and fear when he actually wanted to…  

As it was, Q eventually regained control of himself, although then all he felt was morose and exhausted.  “We didn’t even _win_ ,” he mumbled, head tipped against the window and eyes closed.  He spared a thought to the fact that James wasn’t driving like a maniac for once, which was appreciated.  And infuriating, because this proved that James _could_ drive responsibly, but just chose not to.

“You did your best,” was the expected, mollifying reply.  Less expected was the fact that it sounded incredibly sincere.  That was rare for any agent, and Bond in particular.

Still, Q muttered back, “Hm.  A fat lot of good that did us.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Q.”

Q didn’t answer that, instead sinking into his stormy thoughts and getting lost in the vibration of the car through his skull and the coolness of the window glass.  He didn’t pull himself from his thoughts and James didn’t try to draw him out, even once they’d come to a stop and parked.  Only then did Q open his eyes, realize that James had never asked for his address, and also note, “This isn’t my street.”

“It’s mine,” James said, as if that made perfect sense, and then got out of the car to circle around and let Q out.  Q didn’t exactly need the gentlemanly gesture, but he was still confused, and therefore only exited the vehicle when James opened the door and reached for his hand to pull him out.  James was still being surprisingly _not_ a bastard about everything, and it all combined to make Q rather speechless and off-kilter - enough so that he simply followed James from there, into an apartment building he’d never been in before, and up to the third floor.  Only once they were there, and James was in the process of unlocking the front door, did Q finally reboot his tired brain enough to ask, “Why are we at your flat instead of mine?”

“Because, between the two, it sounds like mine is the one that has actual food in it,” Bond supplied simply, as the lock gave way and they let themselves in.  Perhaps Q might have been a bit more wary, following a dangerous man like James into his own lair, but Q was too worn out to be properly cautious.  Besides that, he’d heard that James was surprisingly moral around people he considered friends and colleagues - although he’d never really tested that until now.  

Q wasn’t sure which he was (friend or colleague), but he was starting to realize that he did perhaps need someone watching out for him, since he hadn’t really thought ahead to feeding himself.  “I could have ordered takeout,” Q defended, but he was already toeing off his shoes and dumbly taking in James’ home.  It was surprisingly… homey.  There were no other words for it.  Q had expected more ostentatiousness, but instead the place was all worn furniture and dark, muted colors.  He wanted to call it cozy, but maybe that was just his sleepy brain talking, seeing napping spaces in anything. 

James, three steps ahead of him and shoes already off, was heading towards what looked like the kitchen.  He replied without turning around, “I don’t think that takeout would quite fix your state of malnourishment at this point, Q.”

Unsure if he should be offended or not, Q just stood in the doorway for a bit longer, glaring uncertainly at Bond’s broad, retreating back.  Then Q startled, as something bumped his leg.  He looked down, more surprised by what he saw than possibly anything that had happened thus far.  While he’d been trained to expect all manner of atrocities and strangeness from agents, nothing had prepared him to expect a massive, fluffy grey cat in 007’s apartment.  “Bond, I think a cat broke into your flat,” he said distractedly, still staring.  He _really_ wanted to pet the feline, but was still a bit too much in shock to do so.  He’d had three cats back when he’d still lived with his folks, but hadn’t had the time or means since then, and now realized that he missed their companionship desperately.

Pots were rattling in the kitchen, but Bond’s low chuckle also drifted back like a melodious kind of thunder.  “It’d be more accurate to say she ‘broke in’ almost a year ago, and hasn’t left since.  She’s mine.”  Q heard water running.  “In a manner of speaking.”

Q understood that last phrase surprisingly well, even with his overworked brain, because he keenly remembered feeling more owned than owner when in the presence of his family’s cats.  He found his mouth twitching in an unplanned smile, and he finally bent down, unable to resist the urge to stick out his hand.  He didn’t pet her - she was an awfully big cat, and if she lived with a 00-agent, perhaps had some of their more prickly habits of self-defense - but found his heart melting as pumpkin-orange eyes immediately focused on his fingers and she moved forward to sniff.  A friendly butt of her grey-black head immediately followed, proving friendliness.  “What’s her name?” Q asked, as he proceeded to stroke her head and the luscious long fur down her back.

“Cat,” was the incredibly creative answer.  James didn’t sound particularly embarrassed, but perhaps that was because it now sounded like he was focused on chopping something in the kitchen.

Q hadn’t quite realized how much he missed having something fluffy to pet until this moment, and found himself sitting down on the floor next to his removed shoes.  Cat was quick to step up onto his crossed ankles, her orange eyes slitted pleasantly.  She was truly not what Q would have expected from a pet of 007’s - if Q ever imagined James having a cat, he’d have pictured some sort of scrappy, tough-looking thing.  Instead, though, Cat was quite luxurious.  Her coat was like smoke, thick enough for Q’s fingers to get lost in, and only her pure size bespoke any sort of durability.  Cat was a queenly sort of cat.  Q could all but feel his blood pressure going down for the first time in weeks as he stroked her and hummed along with her throaty purrs.  

Surprisingly, James didn’t interrupt, even to ask why Q was taking so long to move from the doorway and into the flat proper.  In fact, because 00-agents like Bond were trained to be so bloody soft-footed, the only way that Q even knew he was sharing the flat with another human being was the occasional sounds of chopping or stirring that emanated from the kitchen.  Q didn’t know how long it was before James did eventually come looking for him, exiting the kitchen to halt with a surprised look on his face, perhaps surprised after all to find his Quartermaster sitting on his doormat with a lapful of grey-black fur.  

Recovering quickly, James dangled something from his fingers.  “Cat,” he said, like one might idly get the attention of an old-friend, a bored calling of a name when you knew the other person would recognize your tone before the word itself.  And, indeed, the feline immediately twisted, ears pricking up.  Q felt absolutely bereft when she immediately bounded from his lap to take whatever it was from James’ fingers.  On closer inspection, it looked like a piece of chicken.  James wiped his fingertips clean on his jeans before approaching Q..  “Come on, you’ll get stiff that way.”

“I don’t think I can get up.”  Q felt plaintive and cranky in the absence of his newfound furry friend.  

James was patient but implacable, though, extending his hands down coaxingly.  “That’s why I’m going to help you.  Up you get.” 

Q truly would have struggled to get up on his own, he realized, as he gripped James’ hands tightly and relied mainly on the other man’s strength to get to his feet.  The world didn’t sway too badly when he regained his footing, but his legs felt both stiff and weak at the same time.  And all of him ached.  He released a displeased little groan, finally admitting, “Maybe I do need a bit of a break.”

“A bit?” James echoed incredulously, but was good enough not to press further.  Really, James was being quite a gentleman about all of this, where he could have been an utter arse.  “Take the sofa.  Food will be ready in a bit, but I’ve already put the kettle on.”

“I like my tea-”

“With milk and sugar, I know.”

Oh, right, James was a spy.  Q couldn’t find any other reason to argue, so with a weak nod, he tottered off towards the indicated sofa.  He moaned when he sat down in it, finding it a delightful mix of firm yet giving - or maybe it was because his bones were happy for anything that wasn’t his work-chair.  He didn’t realize that he’d closed his eyes and started drifting until he was startled back to alertness by a weight landing in his lap.  Eyes snapping open, he saw James standing in front of him, perhaps looking a bit amused now that he’d deposited Cat on top of his unsuspecting Quartermaster.  “Just don’t leave your cup unattended if she’s still here when I come back with tea,” James advised, eyes glittering with a quiet sort of mischief, “She likes to drink whatever someone else is drinking.”

Q’s hands had lifted up automatically to bury themselves in long fur, and it took his brain a moment to catch up with everything.  When it did, James was walking back to the kitchen again, so Q called hesitantly after him, “So, wait, does that mean she’s had-?”

“Some of my best Scotch?  Yes.”  James looked back, and for the first time looks a bit embarrassed.  “I’ve learned to be a bit more watchful of my drinking habits since then.”

Q wondered if those drinking habits simply meant keeping his tumbler out of Cat’s reach, or if it also meant drinking less, because Q clearly remembered reading about alcohol problems in James’ file, yet he hadn’t seen signs of it in the man - at least not in recent memory.  Looking back down at the feline settling happily in his lap, Q wondered just how many changes she’d wrought in her owner.  Q gave her a scratch under the chin by way of a silent reward, and her purring started up again.  Wanting to keep talking but not really knowing what to say, Q asked, “What do you feed her?”  She really was a massive cat, but not fat, he thought.  Big but healthy. 

“When I’m away, the little old lady next door gives Cat whatever wet and dry food I have on hand,” James admitted.  He was remarkably free with information in the confines of his own home, answering without any discernible hesitation.  If Q craned his neck, he could just see the man messing with the kettle in the kitchen, back muscles flexing beneath his white shirt as he moved.  “When I’m home… Cat eats anything,” he admitted, a bit more abashed.  Cat _mrrowed_ unexpectedly, as if understanding the last sentence and verbally approving.  

James, surprisingly, talked back to her instantly, “Yes, I know that makes you pleased as punch, you fuzzy menace, but you’re lucky I didn’t accidentally kill you off that way as a kitten.”

Cat grumbled, but then settled in to knead her paws against Q’s thigh.  

Approaching the sofa soon after with a mug of steaming liquid, James raised one eyebrow and deadpanned, “All right, a hot cuppa for one fuzzy menace I know-”  As Q took the drink but narrowed his eyes in confusion, James turned his eyes to Cat and snapped his fingers at her, getting her attention instantly before going on, “-And a bit more leftover chicken for you.”

Before Q could get his overworked brain to come up with a retort for that, James was walking away and Cat was eagerly hopping off Q’s lap to follow.  She was clearly a smart feline.  Q found himself watching Bond more, though, because the man’s present demeanor was something he hadn’t seen before: striding away but still idly clicking his fingers, James was watching his pet with a rare, soft smile, something relaxed and genuinely guileless about his features.  

Q decided not to argue about being lumped into the ‘fuzzy menace’ category, because James clearly loved his fuzzy menaces.  It was a humbling and heart-warming realization.  Q sipped his tea (which wasn’t half bad) and watched in contented silence as James hand-fed little bits of cooked chicken to Cat.  This had been a terrible week, but he was quietly grateful that it had allowed him to take a peek into Bond’s life outside of espionage.

~^~

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone enjoyed the short, cute, fluff-story ^_^ As always, I have no plans to continue this 'verse - but if anyone feels inspired, they are more than welcome to write more on their own. Just send me a link so that I can read it and enjoy, too!


	13. Blofeld's cat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When James drives away after _Spectre_ , it's not for the reasons that everyone thinks...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: pining; I decided that Q _did_ get shot in _Spectre_ , but not too badly; agents breaking and entering; cats; teensy bit of Madeleine Swann bashing
> 
> No real warnings :) Not beta read

The whole Spectre debacle really had been tedious.  Even without Q getting winged by a bullet in that damned car (this was why he only ever took the tube) and C having the gall to think that he could take over MI6, James had also had the audacity to pop up and ask Q for one last favor.  

And Q, soft soul that he was, had acquiesced.  As Q had watched the agent drive away with the Aston Martin, he’d kicked himself for being a thrice-damned fool, because giving things to James Bond was never a rewarding exercise.  Give him tech, and he lost it.  Give him a car (like now), and he destroyed it (Q would never see that glorious Aston Martin again, he was sure).  Give him your heart, and he’d probably lose or destroy that, too.  Not that Q had professed undying love for the man, but he had bent rules for James more than once, and for a professional like Q, that was tantamount to a declaration of love.  Now he was left staying at the space where the car had been - and where James had been - trying to think up how to explain why he’d given an entire car away to an agent who was more trouble than he was worth.  Maybe he could claim that it was a retirement present…  Because everything was certainly pointing towards James retiring.  Q winced as he thought about it, images of Madeleine Swann riging unbidden in his mind.  It was Q’s job to monitor agents, and he had eyes everywhere (he could’ve put Nine-Eyes to Shame), so he’d definitely seen the thing developing between Miss Swann and Mr. Bond.  He’s seen more than he wanted to, actually.  Well, seeing Bond naked had been something of a perk, if Q were being entirely honest…

Shaking his head and closing his eyes, Q forcibly derailed his thoughts.  “He’s not yours, Q,” he reminded himself, although a feisty little voice reminded him that all of the agents were his.  Just… not quite in the way that James was probably Madeleine’s now.  And once James’ retirement became official, then neither the Quartermaster nor Mallory nor anyone in MI6 would have any claim on the man.

“Enjoy your retirement, James,” Q said quietly to the empty spaces left behind, trying to remind himself that this was all a good thing.  James’s file said that he’d lost loves before, and it was a known fact that very if any 00-agents got to retire while they were still breathing.  James was getting a rare gift that few in his profession did, but which all of them deeply deserved. 

Turning to his computer, Q focused on erasing the digital footprint of the Aston Martin.  James had asked him before to help him disappear, and Q was good at that - it was child’s play, therefore, to make a car disappear.  He very, very purposefully did not let himself search the CCTV footage for signs of James, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to take it if he saw James and Madeleine in the car together, riding off into their happy sunset.  Leaving Q with his emotional constipation and the knowledge that he really didn’t know what he felt for Bond anyway. 

~^~

Q didn’t end up getting into much trouble for the Aston Martin - less because its absence went unnoticed (it didn’t, despite Q’s disappearing skills), and more because everyone was going easy on him because he’d been shot.  It wasn’t a noticeable injury (case and point, James hadn’t noticed it), but enough people had been in the car when it had happened that the information was known by all pretty soon.  Ironic how even MI6 had such an active grapevine.  Instead of telling people to fuck off and that he was fine, like he wanted to, Q decided to strategically use that pity to keep himself out of trouble.  He even pulled up his shirt so that Moneypenny could look at the bandages taped to his ribs on the right side, and coo at him consolingly.  Q wanted to protest that it wasn’t really that bad (the bullet had nicked a rib but otherwise had only winged him), but even more than that he didn’t want to explain that he’d acquisitioned an expensive MI6 toy for an agent that he’d never even officially claimed as a friend (and vice versa).  

Still, after three days, Q was just about ready to punch the next person who told him what he brave boy he was for getting injured in the line of duty.  It was a relief to come home to his two cats and his quiet flat.  Here he could let his metaphorical hair down, and actually take his shirt off without people seeing his bandage and looking at him like he was close to death.  “I’m not that breakable,” Q muttered, and the fatter of his two cats - a cinnamon-and-white shorthair of some unknown breed - look up at him and meowed in apparent agreement.  The other cat was already trooping across the room to the food bowl with an air of entitlement in her creamy body.  Tipping a bit of kibble into their bowls, Q hissed and gripped his ribs as he bent down to pet them.  Okay, perhaps he still had a bit of mending to do… 

Cats tended, Q more or less fell into bed (but carefully, because today had already been enough of a pain without adding the physical discomfort of grazed ribs).

~^~

Q woke, not surprisingly, to cat fur in his nose.  “Gerroff!” he slurred, coughing and pushing the fuzzy mass far enough away to prevent suffocation.  “I thought we went over this,” he muttered once his mouth was free, “You two lumps are allowed in my room at night, and in return, you don’t murder the person who feeds you-”  

At that point, Q woke up enough to realize that the fur under his hands didn’t feel right.  It was still a cat, he was sure of it - he could feel the paws on his collarbones, and had heard a mrrp of annoyance when he’d pushed it - but both of his adoptees were shorthairs, and now his finger were singing into a long, plush pelt.  The room still dark, Q reached to the bedside table for his glasses, and to flick on the nearby lamp.  As the room was flooded with a soft golden glow and Q regained the power of twenty-twenty vision, he was greeted by what looked to be a white Persian cat sitting on his chest.  It opened his mouth and actually hissed at him then, causing Q to freeze, suddenly realize that he was not only shirtless and vulnerable, but also that he was nearly nose-to-nose with the strange cat.

Something thumped and then cursed from his living room.  Q was still too focused on the cranky cat to be properly startled by the sound of footsteps approaching his door, and was in fact still stunned and frozen by the time the door was pushed further open.  None other than James Bond stood in the doorway, looking like he’d just been awoken and wasn’t any happier about it than Q was.  However, those pale-blue eyes quickly latched onto Q’s predicament, and then James was swearing again.  Long strides took the man closer, and despite the Persian’s apparent ill-temper, James grabbed and lifted it into the air without hesitation.  “Fuck, why are you like this?” he muttered at the cat, who hissed at him, too - although at that point Q realized that the vocalization was not accompanied by clawing.  Apparently, this cat just like to hiss recreationally. 

Q, propping himself up on his elbows now, stared stupidly for a second before demanding, “What the hell are you doing in my flat?”

Both cat and agent (ex-agent?  Q didn’t remember if he’d seen the paperwork…) turned from glaring at each other to blink at Q instead.  Instead of answering or even looking particularly abashed, James got distracted by something further down Q’s body, asking his own question a beat later, “When in the world did you get shot?”

For the first time, Q realized his state of undress.  He hadn’t even gotten under the covers, but dragged a corner awkwardly up over his chest now, clutching it to his breastbone.  “While you were running through the old MI6 building with Blofeld,” Q snapped back, more sharply than he’d intended.  The cat hissed at him again, and Q transferred his glare to it before asking with a bit of rising mania in his voice, “For get why you’re in my flat - why are you in my flat with a cat?”

James, the bastard, had the audacity to smirk.  He knee-jerk reaction was apparently to try his hand at comedy: “...Because it rhymes?”

For three long beats Q just stared, then he gave up with a noisy scoff and also tossed the blanket aside to get up.  He’d planned on storming out of the room to either get some air or to find some alcohol, but sadly, he twisted his torso too fast and ended up sitting on the edge of the bed cupping his ribs.  James, proving that he was not entirely an arse, wiped the smirk off his face.  “Q?”

“I’m fine,” Q waved him off, having been asked if he was all right too many times already.  “I got winged in the Spectre debacle, but all it did was tear up skin and nick a rib.  And of course everyone still thinks I’m dying.”

Surprisingly, James took that hint better than anyone else did, and did not, in fact, ask whether or not Q was in fact dying.  Instead, he set the cat down on the floor, and asked quite calmly, “Can I see?”

Q couldn’t really see why he needed to, but it was starting to catch up to him that James Bond was in his house, and that he’d really, really missed him, even if it hadn’t even been a week yet.  So with a bit of grumbling that was mostly for show, Q leaned back and moved his hand away.  He also turned his head away as James bent down to get better look, but couldn’t help but slant his eyes back at the man, unable to believe that he was really here.  The man looked good.  He was dressed down more than usual, in jeans and a black tee, and while his hair was rumpled, he didn’t have the omnipresent look of exhaustion most MI6 employees ended up getting before long.  In fact, his blue eyes were alert and intent as he eyed Q’s side.  His hand was warm and steady as it came up to lightly brush the skin below the wound, prompting Q’s ribs to contract, tickling and avoiding the touch.  “Sorry,” James said, absently, before the moment was broken by a thrumming purring noise. 

Both Q and James looked down to see that the flat’s native cats had come to join the party, and were winding around Bond’s ankles and stepping on his socked feet.  The smile flashed back onto Bond’s face.  “These two little beggars were sleeping on me,” he noted.  Then he looked up at the Persian, who had actually settled down against Q’s side and closed its eyes.  “So was this one, but apparently he decided to go make friends.”

“Make friends?” Q parroted with no small amount of derision.  Usually, he was a lover of all things feline, but now his instincts to pet the Persian were warring with his desire to not lose fingers.  He scoffed, “He makes friends like you do, Bond - with copious threats of violence, apparently.”

James snorted back and reached out a fearless hand to stroke the Persian’s head.  It grumbled but allowed it.  “Oh come on, Q, Kev is all hiss and no bite.”

“ _Kev_?”

Now James looked ever-so-faintly embarrassed.  Since Q had never seen him with that expression before, he savored it now, even as James left the Persian alone and bent to pet Q’s cats instead, mumbling, “Short for Kevlar.”

Q couldn’t help it.  After a moment of just staring at James’ down-haired head, he burst out laughing.  It took ages for him to get himself back under control, and his side was aching again by the time he did.  “Oh god,” he panted, just about in tears from laughing, “this night cannot get more surreal.  I can’t believe you named a Persian cat after body-armor.”

“Well, what is a person supposed to name a cat?” James snapped back, affronted.  He stood up and crossed his arms. 

Q abruptly realized that his two cats were named ‘Newly’ and ‘Lately’ and shut his mouth with a click of teeth.  “Not Kevlar,” he maintained, but then decided it might be wise to drop the subject.  He tentatively leaned forward to stroke Newly’s creamy-striped head, noting the way that Kevlar… Kev… eyed the attention with a stuffy expression.  “You never answered my first question, by the way.  What are you doing here, James?  I thought you were enjoying your retirement with _that wom_ \- with Miss Swann.”

James’ expression abruptly transformed into one of confusion.  For a moment there was silence until Lately, feeling ignored, bumped against the back of James’ calf hard enough to get the man’s attention.  He still stared at Q even as he reached down and picked the fatter cat up with about as much grace as one would pick up a loaf of bread (fortunately, Lately didn’t mind).  “Who said I was retired?” he asked, looking sincerely confused.  As Lately stretched up in James’ grip to rub his head under the man’s chin, James just kept staring at Q in bemusement, also asking, “And who said I was with Madeleine?”

Now it was Q’s turn to be flummoxed and embarrassed.  Starting to feel very exposed again (possibly in more ways than one, since he feared some jealousy had slipped into his tone when he’d spoken of Madeleine), Q looked about for a shirt, stalling - unfortunately, Kevlar chose that moment to become friendly.  Whatever had driven the Persian to find Q’s bed and sleep on his face now encouraged the cat to get up and step in a princely fashion onto Q’s legs, flopping down in a puddle of long white fur.  Q was trapped.  Trapped by a cat who clearly had a personality disorder.  Now, though, as Q looked at the cat more closely, he thought that he realized why it might be a bit strange…  “Is…?”  Forgetting James’ question entirely, Q lifted his hands as if afraid to touch the feline on his lap.  With something like horror in his voice, Q squeaked, “Is this _Blofeld’s cat?_ ”

By the sound of James sighing, he perhaps realized that his question had been dodged - but since he’d been dodging questions, too, it was only fair.  Perhaps that was why he answered, albeit reluctantly, “Yes.”

“Why do _you_ have it?!”  Q was definitely still dreaming.  Or had slipped into an alternate dimension.  Or had finally lost his marbles. 

James just raised one eyebrow.  His challenging expression as a bit ruined by Lately batting at his chin with a white paw.  Newly, being ignored by everyone now, mewled petulantly and sat on Q’s feet even while James retorted, “Do you really think that anyone _else_ would adopt him?”

Considering what Q had learned about the Persian’s personality in just the last ten minutes, perhaps James had a point.  There probably weren’t a lot of organizations that specialized in re-homing the pets of crazed super-villains either, especially ones with torture chambers on their properties.  Q wondered if James had bonded with the cat over that whole experience, but was tactful enough not to ask.  Instead, moved by a bit of pity, he lowered his hands to try petting Kevlar.  The cat opened his mouth in a fussy hiss but then leaned into Q’s palm.  A strange cat indeed…  “I take it you renamed him?” Q asked instead, a safer topic. 

James nodded.  He set Lately down and then looked awkwardly at Newly, as if suddenly forgetting how to deal with felines - Q realized that he’d never seen Bond interact with pets before, unless he was trying to outmaneuver someone’s guard-dogs.  “I don’t know what the fuck Blofeld called him, and I don’t really care.”

“It’s not like cats answer to their names anyway,” Q shrugged, relaxing some, “Mine don’t, anyway.”  

That little bit of a grin was back on James’ face, as he pointed out, “Whose names you still haven’t told me yet.”

“You still haven’t told me why you broke into my house with a cat in tow.”

“Touche.”  Instead of explaining right away, James sighed and sat down next to Q on the bed.  While Newly and Lately had been a bit hesitant to get near Q and Kevlar, they saw the second available lap immediately, and went for it.  James looked somewhere between pleased and unsettled, especially as the two shorthairs began squabbling for space.  Once they realized that James had one hand to pet each of them, they settled down, and James did, too.  Only then did he admitted in a gruff grumble, “I’m here because I know fuck-all about taking care of a cat, and I knew that you had two cats and a mortgage.” 

Q felt the sudden urge to chuckle, and suddenly he felt a bit less awkward in his skin.  “So… the great James Bond broke into my flat… for cat-care advice?”

“I actually was going to just drop him off here, but then I realized that he might eat your cats,” James muttered belligerently, but the gentle way he stroked under Newly’s chin proved that he was just joking.  Or, at least, that the bark in his voice was just that - all bark.  He was more like Kevlar than he perhaps wanted to admit.  “So I decided to kip on your sofa until morning, or at least until I was sure that there wouldn’t be a fuzzy little war in your living room.”

Reading between the lines, Q deduced that James had fallen asleep on his sofa without meaning to.  Kevlar made a fussy noise and angled his head until Q scratched behind one ear. 

“All right, I’ve answered your questions, now you answer mine,” James said, lifting his head from watching Newly and Lately to instead level a steady look Q’s way.  Only then did Q realize how close they were, James’ eyes almost colorlessly pale in the lamplight, their intensity increased by the nearness.  “You thought I’d… what?  Run away with Madeleine?”

Yes, that was exactly what Q had thought, but now he felt a fool for thinking it.  Shoulders hunching, Q looked down at Kevlar, pretending that the cat needed to be monitored… even though the plushy monster had finally decided to play nice.  The hissing had been replaced by stuttered purrs. 

Apparently Q took too long to answer, because James sat back a bit.  Q didn’t need to be looking at his face to read surprise in his body language, as he figured Q out.  Out of reflex, Q got defensive.  Still looking down at Kevlar, he snapped, “What else was I supposed to think? The two of you were all over each other, and you literally asked me for a getaway car.”

“So she’s a good lay,” James shrugged.  Q’s head jerked up, staring at the man, who met his eyes with stubborn mildness.  The agent’s pale eyes gave a measured blink, but never wavered from Q’s sharp gaze.  

Flustered, Q countered, “But you chose to save her from-”

“I save a lot of people, Q.  Some of them I like even less than her,” was James’ maddeningly calm reply.  He was still watching Q with that steady, keen expression, and it made Q abruptly want to hide himself somehow.  But he couldn’t.  Because he had a potentially violent and very fluffy cat on his lap, and his fingers were presently buried in said fluff.  Q looked away, unsure how to react without making… well, without making more of an idiot of himself, since he had a feeling he already looked like a fool.

“You want to know why I didn’t run away with her?” James asked, his voice unexpectedly soft.  The tone tricked Q into looking back at the man, and meeting those arresting blue eyes.  “Because she actually asked me to.”

That statement hit Q like a punch in the gut, and he didn’t realize that he’d reacted until Kevlar hissed at him - Q had apparently tightened his fingers in the cat’s fur.  As he loosened his hold, Lately gave him a worried look and a soft mewl from his perch on James’ right thigh. 

Somehow, Q was able to get his mouth working, and the question came out shakily but quietly, “Why didn’t you say yes to her?”

“Because,” James said, one muscled shoulder rolling in another shrug.  He spoke as if explaining the simple facts of the universe, like the sound of water, or the color of the sky.  “She only wanted what I could be.  She wanted to change me.  But what I am is an agent of MI6, and I couldn’t be that with her.”  James paused, and something more raw slunk into his voice as he admitted, “You don’t know how exhausting it is to spend so much time pretending.  I can do it for work, on a mission, sure - but I’d have to do it all the time to be what Madeleine was looking for.”

Something unravelled in Q’s chest.  He felt as if something has been tight and knotted around his heart, and now it was loosening, the pain fading.  His whole body relaxed, and suddenly even his ribs didn’t hurt, even as Kevlar started up his rocky, frankly spastic purring.  Perhaps the cat was out of practice.  To be honest, Q was just about to give the cat lessons, because he felt like he was about to start purring himself.  He was already grinning goofily, and had to look down again to hide the look, pretending to watch the cats - Lately had crawled off James’ lap to check out Kevlar.  There was a bit of tail-swishing in response, but no sudden violence or clawing. 

“She’s also allergic,” James said, out of the blue.  Q looked up at him in surprise, tilting his head while stroking Lately’s dark-cinnamon back.  The apparently-not-ex-agent obliged to clarify, “Madeleine is allergic to cats.  When she heard that I was going back to Morocco to find Blofeld’s cat, that was apparently the final straw.”  James’ smile was just the tiniest bit wicked.  “Apparently it was either her or the cat.”

“And you chose this monster?” Q choked on a chuckle.  His cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling, but he couldn’t stop.  Kevlar hissed as if knowing that he was being spoken about, but then buffed his flat face against Q’s bellybutton as if in inexplicable approval.  

“Well, as you pointed out, _this monster_ and I are a bit alike,” James noted.  He tweaked the Persian’s tail gently, and got the expected hiss.  Lately, perhaps thinking this was a game, batted at the fluffy white tail twice before turning in a circle three times and sitting on it.  Kevlar merely grumbled and closed yellow-green eyes.  “I’d also like to point something else out,” the blond-haired man added.  When Q looked up at him expectantly, James surprised him by leaning in close, poor Newly nearly sliding off the agent’s lap as he leaned towards Q’s ear to murmur, “Madeleine may have wanted to change me, but I think you’ve always secretly liked me just the way I am - not matter what you say about my habit of destroying tech.”

As James leaned back, a soft, surprisingly fond smile on his face, Q was left at a loss for words.  He just continued to sit and stare, heart doing double-time in his chest and a flush creeping toward his ears and neck, as James stood up and padded quietly out of the room, giving him space.  He carried Newly cupped in the crook of one arm, though, and Q heard the sounds of the sofa-cushions depressing, so he knew that the agent hadn’t left.  Instead, he was making himself comfortable.  

Not only in Q’s flat, it seemed, but in his heart as well.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A friend requested that I rewrite the end of _Spectre_ so that instead of running away with Miss Swann, James goes and gets Blofeld's cat... and thus this ficlet was born ;) I really can't get enough of cats in this fandom...


	14. Sicker Than a Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q has actually called in sick, and MI6 is so worried about him that they send in a 00-agent to give him his medicine. 
> 
> Q is a surprisingly atrocious patient.
> 
> Tags: pre-relationship 00Q, sick!fic, lots of swearing, fluff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Teaching and grading is still keeping me pretty nailed down - but I squeeze in juuuust enough writing time for a short little sick!fic!

It was a Friday night, and instead of being on a mission or out on the town, James Bond  was sitting at the edge of the Quartermaster’s bed with a resigned expression.  There wasn’t even anything sexy about this encounter: Q had actually called in sick to work that morning, and MI6 was officially in a panic about it, because Q was never sick.  In fact, Q never seemed to leave work, so now MI6 had actually sent a 00-agent with cold meds to make sure their resident tech-prodigy didn’t die.  Too bad Q wasn’t exactly on board with that program.  "Come on, Q, you've got a fever and I've been told that if you don't take your medicine, it's my head on the chopping block."

Q, who was buried nearly to his nose in piles of blankets but sans glasses, gave James one of the most gimlet looks that the agent had ever encountered, and then said in a stuffy voice, "Fight me."

James blinked twice.  He and Q hadn’t exactly always gotten along, but that had usually been James’ fault, with Q being consummately polite.  Recovering from his surprise, James lowered his eyebrows and replied, "...A fight is actually what I'm trying to avoid here, you blanket-burritoed little heathen."

The Quartermaster narrowed his eyes murderously, and Bond should have taken that as a warning that things were going to get harder, not easier, from here on out.

"Fuck, Q," James growled a few moments later as he placed the medication on the table to free up his hands - only to have the elusive, ill Quartermaster disappear entirely under the blankets like a mole into a hole. James felt like some sort of ferret, trying to dive in after him. "Is this payback for that one time I was sick?" he asked in exasperation.

"Yes," was the snotty reply, muffled by more layers of blankets than James had thought anyone could possibly own. It was like a black hole in there - a Quartermaster-swallowing-black hole, which a beat later also emitted one more commentary, "Bastard."

"No one," James lamented, still digging through comforters, "is going to believe what a stroppy little tit you are when you're feverish.”  He himself felt like he’d stepped into an alternate dimension.  “I'm going to go to my grave with this story." He found what he thought was an ankle, and grabbed. The blankets immediately underwent an earthquake as Q struggled, and now there was a whole string of profanities being spewed.

With Q still swearing like a nasally congested sailor and clinging to his blankets, it was amazingly difficult for James to get the upper hand - forget that James was thirteen-stone of muscle and the Quartermaster was a tweed-wearing string-bean. James only got Q free of the blankets by dint of both of them falling off the bed, James onto his arse, dragging a pile of grumpy Q down on top of him. For a moment, there was stillness. Then Q sneezed, wheezed, and muttered "Arsehole" as if it were just the most natural thing to say as he exhaled against 007's shirt-front.

"Love you, too, Q," James sighed up at the ceiling, and then tried to roll over far enough to reach the medicine still perched on the bedside table. Q, predictably, made a whining noise and tried to escape back to the rumpled pile of blankets on the bed - the whine turned to a remarkably catlike growl of displeasure as James tightened his grip. "Oh, no you don't, you little sod," the agent declared even as Q began struggling in earnest.

The fight ended with James sitting back against the bedside table with Q in an unhappy headlock, _both_ of them now calling each other names until James managed to shut Q up with a capful of liquid medication down his throat.

Q immediately made a disgruntled noise, but James clamped a hand over his mouth before any attempts could be made to spit medication back out into 007's face. A bit more thrashing, subvocal growling (on both their parts), and coughing (just on Q's part) later, and the Quartermaster finally swallowed. James hesitantly lowered his hand, sighing out a deep breath of relief when Q merely sneezed once and then said something unflattering about Bond's pedigree. In response, the agent relaxed, hand sliding down across Q's throat without a thought, a smooth but gentle stroke.

"You should come with a warning label," James commented wryly after the two of them had simply sat for a moment, Q with his back to Bond's chest, summer-warm with fever, both of their legs stretched out tiredly before them. "They say that I'm a menace, but if we just threw you at the enemy every time you had a cold, we'd have mercenaries waving truce flags in minutes."

"Don't you dare compliment me while we're fighting," was the muttered threat he got in response, and another congested sniffle.  But the tone lacked some of its previous bite.

Chuckling, James relaxed a bit more, wondering whether it was a bad sign that threats made him feel more at ease rather than less; it probably meant he’d been a 00-agent too long. He kept up the idle caress of his hand for no other reason than because he saw no reason to stop, something about the smooth feel of Q's neck against his own calloused palm soothing. Q, surprisingly, didn't seem to mind - he'd been cursing James up one side and down the other for everything else so far, but apparently having an assassin's thumb caressing the line of his carotid, fingers curled over his windpipe, didn't warrant any verbal abuse. Today was a very backwards sort of day, James decided. Adding to that was that Q was, probably for the first time, the warmer of the two of them - James felt like he was holding a hot water bottle, and it was surprisingly nice. "You know, if you weren't so stroppy right now, I'd possibly call you cuddly," he opined for the hell of it.

"And if you weren't such a bastard, you'd be charming," was the expected retort. By now, though, James was pretty sure that Q's insults were just another symptom of being sick, right along with coughing and sneezing. So he didn't take it personally.

In fact, after a beat, James nodded and admitted, "True," and just let his palm rest across Q's throat as he felt his Quartermaster give a swallow - it felt like it was painful, the smooth column of Q's neck spasming beneath the careful weight of Bond's hand. "You've probably got laryngitis," James felt obliged to comment.

Which, of course, led to Q painfully clearing his throat and starting to snap back, "Well, _you've_ probably got-!"

James moved his hand from Q's throat to his mouth again. "Aaaand that's about enough out of you."

The medication must have been taking effect, because Q's struggles at that point were only half as vicious as earlier, and after a few elbows thrown to James' ribs, he settled down with a grumbling little growl that probably would have include the words "fuck" and "you" if James hadn't been covering Q's mouth still. Glaring forward shortsightedly without his glasses, Q did relax after that, folding his arms across his chest instead of actually trying to pull Bond's hand away. It was such a defiant move that James felt his heart warm - one recalcitrant bastard recognizing another. Instead of letting Q go, the agent gave into the impulse to pull Q closer, bending his legs at the knees to cage Q more securely between his thighs, free arm snaking around Q's middle in a loose hold. Hand still over the lower half of Q's face, James pulled him back against him, and Q went with it, his only reaction being a little, fluttering sigh out of his nose.  He still, notably, made no attempt to pull Bond’s hand away, even as his breath ghosted across scarred knuckles.

They just sat like that for awhile, on the floor, James soaking in the novelty of not being the warmest one for once, and feeling the flexion of Q's lean stomach beneath his forearm with every slow breath. Even after a full, long minute, Q didn't protest the hold, and for some reason that had interest sparking in every corner of James' heart. Big breasts and short-cut skirts were certainly enticing, but this? This was _fascinating_.

By this point, Q resembled nothing so much as a grumpy cat that had acquiesced out of laziness to being hugged. However, when James used his grip on Q's face to turn it, so that they were facing one another from only millimeters apart, Q's eyes slitted in something that wasn't anger. He assessed James silently even as the agent assessed him. Then James felt the hot, wet touch of a tongue against his palm, and growled, "Don't lick me," a second before leaning forward to press a kiss against the back of his own knuckles - a necessary barrier between them, given that Q was sick.

Q still keened quietly against James' palm, and closed his hazel eyes all the way.  

“You’re a strange fellow, Q,” James noted as he pulled back, “and you’ve got a dirtier mouth than I expected.”  James was still eyeing the back of his hand, as if seeing that mouth right through his own bones.  Q’s eyes crinkled and James thought he felt a cheeky smirk now against his palm.  The agent couldn’t help but admit after that, “But it’s a mouth I think I could stand to get to know a bit better.”  He leaned in again, and was pleased with how Q tolerated his head being manipulated, twisted to the side and back so that they could remain facing each other, even as Q’s warm shoulder-blades pressed against Q’s chest.  Instead of giving Q any more second-hand (no pun intended) kisses, however, James merely pressed their foreheads together and added dryly, “But later.  When you’re not sicker than a dog and as feisty as a bag of wet cats.”

Only now did Q reach up, grasping James’ wrist, and the 00-agent obliged to remove his hand.  He was rewarded by what was indeed a small, crooked grin.  “Admit it, you like the feistiness.”  He still sounded like his sinuses were plugged, but sickness aside, he looked pleased with himself.

James merely smiled back, the glint his his eyes all the answer that was needed.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> James is probably going to catch Q's cold, just saying... but it's worth it ;)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't plan to continue this fic (since I'm practicing writing oneshots right now), but anyone who wishes to add onto this is more than welcome to. Just be sure to link back to me (or at least share the link of your story so that I can enjoy it, too).


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